ToaL II: Try Ten Months
by LunaStorm
Summary: Part 2 of the Trip of a Lifetime Series. In which the Doctor gets the date a bit wrong, Ron investigates alien spiders and Hermione sets up her own school. Oh, and Harry has a dragon.
1. One Month

_Disclaimer:_ _Anything you recognize isn't mine, just borrowed._

 _A/N: The frame for this story can be found in Chapters 7 and 8 of "D'You Wanna Come With Me?" - the gist of it is that the Doctor accidentally took Harry, Ron and Hermione to Temeraire's world, where Harry managed, with his usual flair, to bond a hatchling dragon whom he called Fortuna; in an effort towards damage control, the Doctor went looking for a device able to reduce Fortuna's size, leaving the three wizards there in the meanwhile, but instead of returning after ten minutes, he showed up ten months later. This story deals with those ten months._

* * *

 ** _One Month_**

It takes a while for things to get sorted out somewhat acceptably.

First there is the uproar over the 'witchcraft' that has disappeared the mysterious blue box and the two suspicious people that had gone in it. Hermione hears very little of this over the pounding of her own heart and the screams of fury and panic that she vents, unable to believe that – that – _alien_ – has left them here.

It's Harry and Ron who have to talk fast and climb mirrors and eventually manage to convince their 'hosts' that a) they're not French spies (their decidedly British accent helps a lot with this), b) they are not dragon-thieves and had, in fact, not meant to steal a dragon at all and c) they really kind of need help, if they wouldn't mind, thank you very much.

Then there is discussion about accommodations and jobs and whether or not they can stay at the Covert, discreet bits of magic to provide identifications letters here and bank credit there (good thing Hermione had researched these kind of spells extensively in preparation for their year on the run), the tentative efforts of the dimension travellers to figure out at least the basics of the world they've stumbled into.

And the continuous tension of being alert because the Doctor could come back any time – literally any time – and they have to be ready, they can't miss their chance, what if he abandons them again?

Hermione has a full tirade worked out before the end of the second night and can't wait to yell it at him; she keeps perfecting it day after day.

Even after they've settled into more or less acceptable lives, (Harry and Ron and the growing Fortuna almost seeming at peace with their unexpected situation), Hermione continues to collapse on the bed she's been assigned, at night, and let the shock accumulated over the day overtake her.

She is in a different world, a startling, fascinating one where sentient (and, in fact, quite intelligent) dragons live and work side by side with humans!

This isn't bad per se, it might even be fantastic, except for the fact that they're trapped here, because that absurd alien has left them.

Oh, and Harry has a dragon.

But that's really just Harry's luck and it isn't remotely as much a problem as the fact that they have no way home. And no library to research one. And no option to practice their magic. She'd loved to explore the wizarding world and she would love to explore this world as well, if she didn't feel so trapped here.

She is in a different time, on top of everything, and this is harder to cope with than the dragons, surprisingly.

She should sort of be used to it – the wizarding world is certainly behind the times when it comes to technology – but then again, magic eliminates the need for a lot of said technology. And Hermione has never before lived without indoor plumbing, nor did she ever want to.

As for finding herself a place in this society, there doesn't seem to be one she can be comfortable with.

She's vaguely relieved that she isn't expected to stay indoor and spend her time embroidering, at least, but things are a long way from what she's used to. If she has to deal with many more condescending males looking surprised she can even read, let alone interpret charts or do the budgeting and ledger maintenance better than the lot of them combined, she might just go spare.

Even the female aviators tend to dismiss her – apparently, if you weren't raised in the Corps, then you must be an empty-headed wilting flower for sure.

She ends up spending more time with the dragons than with the humans: at least they provide intelligent conversation. In fact, most of them are eager to discuss anything from poetry to current events and have excellent heads for maths!

On top of everything there is the niggling fear: what if the Doctor doesn't come back for them? How will they get back home? How will they cope if they're stuck here? How will they even survive? How – how – how?

The passing of weeks does little to change this nightly mantra.


	2. Two Months

_**Two Months**_

His days in this unexpected world are invariably exhausting and at night, Harry has taken to curl up against Fortuna's familiar body and stroke her muzzle gently, lulling her to sleep. The last few weeks have been such a roller coaster of emotions and novelties that he is rather overwhelmed: the rhythmic motion is just as soothing for him as for her.

She is a delight, his dragon is.

Never in his life could he have imagined the depth of the love they share. Faint recollections of what he'd been taught of familiar bonds dance in his mind, but even his friendship with his beloved owl is a pale shadow in comparison to his and Fortuna's relationship.

He wonders if Hedwig would have liked her.

As wonderful as the dragonet is, however, the whole situation her hatching has thrown them in is rather overwhelming.

Not that he isn't used to being swept up in overpowering adventures; he is quite the expert at it, truly, but even he is rattled by the latest absurdities in his life. And when he dares to contemplate the future...

Sometimes he's just grateful that the gruesome pace of their training keeps him from thinking too much; but even with the challenging thrill of aerial manoeuvres and the gruelling effort of endurance training in the air he isn't always able to forget the precariousness of their situation.

Guilt for his friends consumes him. Will they forever be dragged into his own messes?

Hermione, especially, seems to be having a hard time coping with the state of affairs and every time Harry lands, high on endorphins and the exhilaration of flying, guilt swamps him because he likes it here – there are things he could do without, and things he misses, but on the whole, this is a good life. And he has Fortuna.

But what about his friends?

On the other hand... what if they were to go back? What would happen to his dragon?

Would Fortuna find a place to be herself in his world? Would she forever have to hide? Would she like it or hate it? Would she be able to cope with the twists of his Potter luck?

He already loves her too much to even think of his life without her.

Just like the other captains have told him, the bond between them is undeniable, unbreakable, and very much the best thing that ever happened to him.

He has no answers to his doubts; all he can do, for now, is settle in his new life and hope for the best.

Fortuna grows quickly and becomes, in his humble opinion, ever more beautiful.

She is, he is told, a cross between a Malachite Reaper and an Anglewing.

"Reapers are fairly common," the jovial dragon surgeon in charge of her health explains to him the very first day. "Especially the Yellows. They're the golden-hued middleweights, I'm sure you've seen quite a few. Everybody likes 'em for their even temperament, but they're quite slow; slower even than the Regal Coppers, who are our biggest heavyweights. Some people don't think much of them, because they're so common, but they're wrong. No-one's better than a Reaper!"

"A dragon with even temperament?" he cannot help but ask, amused.

"Yeah, well. Almost all British dragons are quite reasonable creatures, when you compare them with, I dunno, the Turkish Kaziliks for instance," the other jokes. "And it's all down to the Reapers: they're almost always good humoured in character an' the halfbreeds all turn out calmed down, even the most intractable breeds. Malachites are less clannish than the Yellows, and less chatty, but don't ye worry. Your gel there, she'll be a sweet one, I c'n tell. Quite hardy, untroubled by all but the worst extremes of heat or cold, an' not fastidious in her diet at all, which is more 'n can be said of most."

Harry strokes the pale green markings gently and coos at the dragonet. "What about her mother?" he asks.

"Ach, her, now. An Anglewing – middleweight, and very adroit. Fantastic fliers, the Anglewings are, and hopefully her heritage will balance out the slowness of her Reaper sire," comments the dragon surgeon sagely.

In this, Fortuna exceeds all expectations. She flies higher and faster and more enthusiastically than anyone had predicted. Harry is positively delighted.

He strikes a friendship with Lieutenant Robert Trenholme, who is hoping to become their first officer and has a romantic soul and a dry sense of humour Harry enjoys a lot, and with Lieutenant Maria Berriman, who will one day captain her mother's Longwing, Fiera, and has a good head on her shoulder and a no-nonsense attitude in quickly bringing him up to speed on this society's unwritten rules.

Trenholme lends him an immensely interesting book by a Sir Edward Howe, _Observations on the Order Draconia in Europe, with Notes on the Oriental Breeds_.

Much to Hermione's amusement, Harry quickly becomes somewhat of an expert on dragon breeds.

"It's interesting," he protests when she teases him about studying without a test looming on him, and he smiles widely. "I sort of understand Hagrid and Charlie now..."

Hermione can only laugh.

He learns that all dragons are helplessly possessive, attracted to shiny objects and hoarding treasure whenever and wherever possible – hardly a surprise; that only some dragon breeds can breathe fire, but others can spit acidic venom – both highly prized traits because of their usefulness in battle.

There are breeds, he finds out, that have rather unique traits such as the ability to make sharp turns in mid-air (which Fortuna has inherited from her Anglewing mother), or the ability to see clearly at night (like the French Fleur-de-Nuit he cannot wait to catch sight of).

He learns the classification system and the typical formations and the regular combinations for a dragon's crew; how to move on Fortuna's back while in the air, how to communicate mid-flight, how to interpret signals and commands from other dragons.

He is rather fascinated to learn that dragons don't weigh anywhere near as much as they look to because their bodies develop compartments that get filled with lighter-than-air gas, helping their aerodynamics – that's what allows them to flight. He is bewildered by just how much they eat, and the odd rituals they work out among themselves for the feeding times.

Most of all, he learns that the breeders' authoritative expertise isn't all that useful because every hatchling is, in fact, unpredictable and will grow up much as it wants to, no matter what his or her lineage.

Fortuna was supposed to be a stout middleweight: the range of Reapers can vary within the breed more than most, but still usually remains between 12 and 15 tonnes and Anglewings are in general slightly bigger than that, so the experts estimated that she'd end up weighing something like 14 to 16 tonnes. She's nowhere near that and all her growth seems to be in length – she passes 40 feet, with a nicely proportioned wingspan of 65 feet, before she's six weeks old, but she remains extremely lean: it isn't very likely that she'll become much bigger soon.

They were hoping she would be a good flier, but didn't expect her to be anywhere near fast, nothing like a Winchester or even a Greyling to be sure, nor as manoeuvrable as an Anglewing.

Instead, she is brilliantly fast and insanely more skilled in flight then even the ever-praised Xenicas.

Everybody marvels and rejoices, the manoeuvres she can pull off enough to off-set the disappointment at her small size. Harry preens and decides they're well suited indeed.

The two of them love to measure themselves against the Winchesters, without a doubt the fastest dragons in the British Isles: impromptu challenges over the lake become a frequent event and a source of a highly competitive betting pool.


	3. Three Months

_**Three Months**_

Two and a half months into their forced visit to a strange past, Ron spends a night turning over and over in his cot.

He can't sleep, it's just too uncomfortable, even with the softening charm he's secretly cast on the mattress. Or maybe he's just too tense.

Tomorrow he will be examined by the Leather Masters, to earn himself a spot in the unofficial guild of skilled craftsmen that create, maintain and fit to the dragons the various types of harnesses needed for service.

He hasn't been so nervous since OWLs.

He is confident in his ability: he has found it both easy and diverting to manipulate the leather and metal needed for the straps, rings, carabiner hooks and nets that secure the crew and hold bombs, gunpowder and supplies while the dragon flies.

In the ten weeks they've been here, he has learned every detail of each harness – the light duty harness, travelling harness and heavy combat harness – and even come up with a few betterments that have been highly appreciated by the ground crews he hangs out with.

He has tried his hand at other things too: bags and satchels and belts and purses and even a pair of gloves. It came out gnarled and a little misshapen, but a few quick swishes of his wand fixed it.

Magic lets him cut down on the time needed for many of the steps, which means he can practice more than the other apprentices and even experiment with his own ideas. People are amazed and impressed by how quickly he picks things up and while he faces some jealousy here and there, generally he's well-liked.

His best friends tease him gently about cheating, but Ron is only puzzled by their attitude: why should he not use his magic like this? For him, raised living and breathing it, it is rather their easiness in _not_ using magic that is unnatural.

Magic is part of his life – a part of him – and he doesn't want to give it up, not even for a day.

Harry is thrilled when he announces his intention to be acknowledged as a Leather Master, if he can; Fortuna – a little grudgingly, because to his hidden amusement, the dragonet is a bit jealous of his friendship with Harry – takes him for a breathtaking celebratory flight, even if he protests (but not too much) that he hasn't gained his gloves yet.

Hermione for her part is shocked and a little disapproving. She doesn't voice it, she forces smiles and tries to be supportive, but she doesn't like it that he's settling in at the Covert for what seems like the long run.

Ron fights not to be hurt. They're trying to fit in, aren't they? Why shouldn't he do it in a way that makes him happy?

Truth be told, he is very proud of the role he's found for himself in this odd world they're unexpectedly trapped in. A leather worker is essential to any dragon crew: all aerial manoeuvres, even the simplest roll, would result in many of the men falling off the back of the dragon if the harness should fail. The safety of the crew in flight is his and his colleagues' responsibility: talk about important work.

He is, quite naturally, Fortuna's harness-tender already and the main supervisor of the fitting and rigging of her harnesses; but if the Leather Masters recognize him as one of them, he'll be able to officially head her ground crew, which will be better for Fortuna and thrilling for him. And will give him many more chances to fly: an important perk of the job in a world where Quidditch is not an option.

Giving up on sleep, he gets dressed and goes out, quietly so as not to disturb his room-mates. Harry and Hermione both rank a private room, but he is rather content with being in a dormitory. Reminds him of Hogwarts, truthfully. He misses Harry a little – the new captain is often too busy for more than a tired few minutes of chatting – but he's making friends with a bunch of other blokes, mostly men and boys from the various ground crews and a few junior flight crew members who like the local pub as much as he does.

Most of his evenings are good fun these days and he keeps happily busy. Being left here might have been a shock to his system at first, but all in all, he finds this world rather brilliant.

Life in the Covert has an active but casual rhythm he enjoys; unlike Hermione, he sees no reason to leave the place and go elsewhere nor can he understand why she would want everybody else, including the dragons, to do so.

There is a reason why dragons are housed in secluded spots away from most human habitation, after all: people are _scared_.

"It makes sense, doesn't it?" he tries to reason with her. "The general populace is terrified of dragons, whether they are feral, friendly, or part of a foreign military. Why expose them all to an unpleasant, forced cohabitation?"

Coming from the secrecy-oriented wizarding world, he can not see any advantage in the openness she preaches.

"Do you realize that most people in Britain can live their entire lives without meeting a dragon close up?" she asks, unexplainably indignant.

"Well, most people in our Britain can live their entire lives without meeting a witch or wizard, but that's rather for the best, isn't it?"

Hermione huffs and rants about aviators being looked upon as inferior to the other branches of the military and how unfair it is (though Ron has found out from his new friends that it's mostly because the special relation between aviator and dragon may preclude raising a family, a sad prospect in these times) and then she rants some more about the forced secrecy of female presence in the Corps and about the appalling standards of education and a number of other things.

He can only shrug and kiss her lightly.

He does not see that many problems with this enclosed society; truth be told, he feels right at home in it.


	4. Four Months

_**Four Months**_

Hermione doesn't deal well with helplessness.

She's a Gryffindor. She's a doer – even when all she does is research, she's supposed to be in control and _active_. She's the brightest witch of her generation. She's the one with the answers, not the one left floundering and not even expected to – or helped to – learn. She's the survivor of a civil war she was a key player in. She's one of Harry Potter's best friends. The things she's done and seen – the things she can do – the things she knows – these people have _no idea!_

Yet here, she's at the mercy of a war-ridden world that inevitably looks down on civilians, of a strict society that has no place for an independent, smart, opinionated woman like her, and of an alien who's the only one who can take them home (without a library nor other wizards' help, she has no hope of figuring out a passage through time and dimensions herself) and _who isn't there_ and might never be.

She's not suited to idle pursuits and she considers resignation just a word starting with r; but she's starting to feel chocked by the lack of appealing options in her current life.

She's beyond tired of dealing with idiots who can barely bring themselves to acknowledge her existence, let alone her brilliance. The only males she can stand, these days, are Harry and Ron and she has to be careful in what she says around them: she doesn't want to burden them with her unhappiness. They aren't in any way responsible for this situation.

(Oh, when she gets her hands on that alien...! She has a _list_ of hexes ready, and it keeps growing.)

Her two friends can't spend all of their time with her, in any case – especially Harry, who's busy with Fortuna; but even Ron has found his leather-work to throw himself into, not to mention a whole circle of friends, and he's less and less around.

She's left with the servants and cleaning staff, who don't know what to make of her (she makes no sense to them, she knows), ground crews and surgeons too busy to pay attention to a civilian woman and those aviators who are grounded for whatever reason: a bunch of irritating fools, the lot of them.

If she says something intelligent, they think she's "trying to look smart" and either get annoyed or mock her for it; the more condescending bastards take it as a sign of interest on her part, which is even worse. If she makes a mistake or admits confusion over something, they dismiss her laughingly as a "dumb blonde". Never mind that she's brown-haired.

Nobody seems to expect her to do much of anything; some of the men are actually surprised she's not happy of receiving their attentions, for surely she must be in want of a husband?

Her attempts at finding a job have tapered off quickly, because she's realized she's just confusing everybody. She can see the uncertainty in many a servant's eyes – is she a gentlewoman or not?

She dresses like the lower classes, but she talks like a lady; she's well-educated – better versed in most fields than men who've gone to university, the local parson discovers with surprise – and she's quite obviously never worked a day in her life, her white hands prove as much, nor is she an aviator: yet she talks of earning her living and doesn't shy from any task, not like a gentlewoman would; she's used to the finer things in life, she can't help the quickly hidden disgust or disappointment at some of the living conditions considered normal here, yet she has no protector, be it guardian or husband – nor is she looking for one – and does clearly not expect any overt sign of respect from the servants.

So who is she?

She doesn't belong here – that's the only truth.

She makes an effort to adapt to the expectations of the times, but it's tough for her to be so stifled.

"We shouldn't be here! We do not belong!" she complains to Harry and Ron, unable to just keep silent as she'd promised herself she would. "If only we could at least go to London..."

"You're right," soothes Harry, and "I'm sorry." But there is an awkwardness in him that she can easily interpret – she knows him well: he fears that leaving this eclosed society would mean leaving Fortuna behind and he's not prepared to do so.

Hermione has accepted this already. She's working on the problem in the back of her mind, trying to find a solution; sooner or later she'll come up with something.

It's Ron that worries her.

Her boyfriend doesn't say anything, but he is working hard to be recognized as a Leather Master and she's happy for him, in a way, or she tries to be, but she can't help fearing that he's _settling,_ in this world where they don't belong. Or at least, she doesn't.

She still wishes to leave and go back to the very world she kept finding fault with, but now misses too terribly to even put into words. Wizarding society is getting shaded in all sorts of golden hues in her memory, even the worst of it gaining from the distance until it's not so bad – kind of good, really – definitely the best place for her.

Oh, how she misses _her_ England.

She misses magic, too, because no matter what Ron says, she doesn't think it smart to risk exposure by using it for everyday tasks. She keeps her wand close at all times, and sometimes strokes it through the fabric hiding it for reassurance, but actual casting is something she's decided to keep for emergencies only.

She definitely misses having a clear goal to work for – be it graduation, Voldemort's defeat, the defence of Muggleborns' rights or the bettering of House-elves' working conditions, she's always had things to fight for, literally or not; important things, meaningful things.

She misses that sense of purpose.

At least the fashion is not as restrictive as she'd feared at first.

The sensible wool dresses are as easy to move in as robes and no one is particularly scandalized or even surprised if she sometimes prefers trousers: many a woman in the Corps feels the same – most only wear gowns when a big social occasion forces them to.

She realizes quickly that it is only among aviators that she can have these little freedoms, however: the rest of the world would still find it unthinkable to see a woman in anything but skirts and the female aviators themselves are a somewhat embarrassing secret of the Corps.

It's a right shame; but she would feel more empathy for these women's predicament if they didn't look down on her so much, for no better reason than that she knows nothing of aerial manoeuvres and battle strategies and whatnot. Not that anyone takes the time to educate her.

Leading the fight for Women Lib a few centuries in advance is not on her agenda, in any case. Much as it irritates her, she can tell this society is not ready. She's also confident that it will happen here sooner than in her own world – the female aviators will see to it, she reckons. In the meanwhile, considering how far in the future gender equality is, Hermione will take what she gets gratefully.

There is a cause that needs championing, however.

She comes to it in a roundabout way, because the most time she can have with Harry (and Fortuna) these days is in the evenings; sometimes Ron joins them too and they spend an hour or so out with the dragons, sitting companionably together and chatting about anything and everything that comes to mind.

In her many efforts to find something to do, that will keep her mind from moulding, she's explored the region as far as she can without risking a night in the woods; she's compiled a list of all possible instances of magic in this world (but it seems, to her secret disappointment, that the wizarding world truly doesn't exist here); she's tried studying the period with a historian's eye (but it's not as satisfying as it would be if she didn't fear being trapped here forever). She's managed to read Harry's books on dragons, too, even if he rather hoards them (to her delighted amusement: imagine that, Harry voluntarily, even enthusiastically, studying! The last time it happened, it was for the Triwizard Tournament – and come to think of it, there was a dragon involved then, too.)

It's the dragons' interest in their nightly discussions and the intelligent comments they interject quite often that intrigue her the most, however.

She's been living in a world with dragons for months now, but it has taken her this long to get truly interested in them, because on the surface, dragons in this world are very similar to those she is familiar with... except for the rather huge difference in intelligence levels.

It's not just that they can all speak, although that, in itself, is rather fascinating.

Harry confesses he had for one moment thought it might be parseltongue, before remembering that he'd lost that ability during the Final Battle; but then he'd seen that everybody was interacting with the dragons, and that it didn't just sound like English: it _was_ English. He is unashamedly relieved and intrigued by this. Ron doesn't quite laugh at him for it, but it looks like he'd want to. Eventually they all agree that it is incredible and leave it at that; Hermione turns it all over and over in her mind, however.

Fortuna speaks English fluently and with good grammar, but nevertheless seems stuck on the reasoning of a small child, at least at first – which isn't altogether unexpected of course: she is a hatchling, even if she's growing fast.

The other dragons are rather like people in that some can discuss mathematical theorems and compose poetry, while others seem barely able to string a few words together; but they are undeniably _intelligent_.

She knows this, right from the start, she spends countless evenings chatting with her favourite dragon friends, but it takes her long weeks – months, even – before she puts together the clues that are staring her in the face.

How Fortuna is always eager to take part in their discussions and so are most other dragons; how they also positively love it when she reads anything aloud to them... Hermione sometimes gets the impression that they're rather bored, especially in the evenings, and that they welcome the intellectual stimulation of such conversations.

She is surprised, and then she's ashamed at her surprise.

That is what starts her on the path of a quiet but thorough revolution.

Dragons are intelligent.

Dragons are uneducated. Underestimated. And unrepresented in the government.

That, Hermione decides, is unacceptable.


	5. Five Months

_**Five Months**_

As winter looses its bitterness and the year slowly slides into spring, Harry and Fortuna begin manoeuvre practice in formation.

It is not easy to find them a suitable place in any of the traditional tactics: they do not fit in the usual categories very well.

Combat dragons are supposed to fly in formations, some as large as ten dragons, and some as small as three; the usual way is to centre them around the dragons with peculiar abilities, like the acid-spitting Longwings or the ponderous Regal Coppers, letting smaller dragons accompany and support them, for reinforcement and protection. All very well in theory, but Fortuna isn't much suited to either role.

She isn't anywhere near as big enough to be a formation leader, nor does she have any special ability, yet her personality and flight style make her too independent to be effective in a support role; she's far too good a flier to be constrained in a marginal role, yet she doesn't have the raw power for heavy combat. She's... different.

Harry's provenance from outside the Aerial Corps, his lack of pre-formed ideas about what a dragon is and isn't supposed to do, exacerbate the situation. She's rebellious and opinionated and unusual and he likes her all the more for it. He doesn't see any problem with it, but most other aviators do and it causes a lot of strife (awfully worsened by Harry's obvious reluctance towards fighting, which they won't forgive, he knows: he himself wouldn't have condoned it, during the war back home).

Formation flying is an amazing exercise of precision and control. When performed right, it is a graceful and apparently effortless dance that can turn deadly in the blink of an eye: but to get to that point, it takes hours upon hours of gruelling practice. Quidditch has given Harry some experience in flying in a group, but this is completely different. It does not help that the two of them love to fly dangerously, and find the contained manoeuvres of formation flying stifling and boring.

Training becomes even worse when they have to include people shooting rifles from Fortuna's back and belly-netting. They have less and less time for anything other than collapsing in exhaustion at the end of the day.

Fortuna hates it. He has to coax her into it every morning and the officers assigned to them all agree: it is a chore and a half.

For several weeks, their training master, the venerable Celeritas, shifts them around in different roles, different positions, trying out different options, experimenting with different combinations.

It does not endear them to their fellow aviators, who are shuffled around in an attempt to figure out the best way to exploit Fortuna's peculiarity: some resent being held back from front-line posts, some find it dull to try minimal variations of the same manoeuvres over and over, some still haven't forgiven Harry for 'stealing' a dragon for himself.

That's only the start of their trouble putting together an air crew. Many refuse to fly with them again after being put through one of Fortuna's more inspired flight patterns. Others are less than thrilled at Harry and Fortuna's inability to stick to well-known manoeuvres, which makes flying with them even more hazardous. But what is the fun in never trying anything new, wonders Harry?

He flat out refuses to "tell his bloody dragon to calm down" as they demand. He loves the way she flies. If they can't cope with it, tough.

All the permutations Celeritas comes up with don't change a simple fact, however. In the end, Harry and Fortuna work best alone.

Harry might be used to being part of the Quidditch team, but really, when it comes right down to it, the Seeker is a loner. Looking for the Snitch is a solitary endeavour, it just happens to take place amidst the exciting chaos of a Quidditch match.

Fortuna for her part is self-sufficient and rather proud: she thinks the other dragons hold her back and would much prefer not to be saddled with them, or with a whining crew for that matter. Very few of the aviators assigned to her encounter her favour.

In their defence, the two of them do not shy from any task that might be asked of them, even when doing it on their own puts them in danger.

Captain Moreton, who is more or less in charge of the Covert these days, admits that there is some usefulness in a middleweight acting like a scout, being fast enough to dart around an area and get an idea of its features while at the same time being capable of withstanding a possible attack, rather than having to rely on stealth or escape. Since they show a talent for that kind of task, Celeritas, too, relents a little.

When he and Fortuna are alone, Harry has no qualms using magic openly – he's sworn his dragon to secrecy with great pomp and drama; she's delighted to share such a secret with her captain and often, when there is no one around, looks at him beseechingly, like a huge puppy, begging to see more magic.

He knows a number of useful little spells to make scouting missions a success, from disillusionment to soundproofing and from sight-enhancing to scanning spells (though warming and rain-repelling charms don't go amiss either: scouting would be a miserable job without them).

His skill in the field buys them a chance to fly solo more often than a middleweight should, even though there isn't much to scout so up north, except for the purpose of practice.

They're still required to learn how to work with a crew and with other dragons, however, keeping their place and following orders; Celeritas is adamant about that – it is implied that they will be deployed in a formation once their training is complete, regardless of their preference. But in the meanwhile, they're allowed to play scouts, much to their delight.

By the time June rolls around in a blaze of sun-drenched days, they're well-known for their prickliness (Fortuna has rejected more than one hopeful officer and Harry has turned down a few more) and recklessness (their flying stunts are the source of more than one charge of madness) but also for their courage and dedication.

Fortuna's training focuses on her agility and fluidity in the air, and on working in tandem with the shooters she's supposed to carry, mostly. Harry has a few more things to learn, of which the one he hates the most is fencing.

Waving a sword around is all well and good – who wouldn't want to do it – but the fact is, his trainers have all started off as children and he has no hope of ever getting to their level: all he does is increase his collection of bruises, racking up quite a number of whacked shins, tired limbs and aching sides; (as for his battered pride, best not to even mention it).

It would be hard enough to learn to fence on the ground, he thinks, but he is expected to do it atop a dragon. His dragon, specifically, the one who can easily go over thirty-two miles per hour but likes to try for faster, and make all sorts of twists and turns while at it! With wind rushing at him from everywhere, powerful muscles shifting under his feet, and people doing their damn best to unbalance and skewer him!

"You need to learn, Captain!" protests Joseph Barton, who's been appointed as his first lieutenant when a delighted Trenholme was assigned an egg, looking scandalized by his grumbling. "What if we're boarded? Mark my word, as soon as we're in a battle, we'll find ourselves pushing boarders back with our blades and don't think the riflemen and bombers will stop their fighting to oblige you!"

If it ever comes to that, he's going to whip out his wand and throw Stunners around like a madman, Harry vows.

Barton, a tall, steady fellow, slightly older than him and quite sociable once you get past his instinctive shyness, is Harry's self-elected conscience; he makes a point of reminding him of what he needs to train for, making sure he's on time for everything he needs to do, earnestly advocating the necessity of war, even teaching him about etiquette and the like.

"We in the Corps don't much care for all the formalities," the lieutenant tells him reassuringly, while at the same time, straightening his uniform, brushing him down briskly and gazing askance at his unmanageable hair. "Starch and neck cloths and whatnot, it's all a lot of nonsense. But the reputation of aviators is bad enough as it is: it's best to endure these tedious stuff than make a spectacle of ourselves in public."

Harry's odd use of language, too, is continually corrected, or at the very least, mercilessly mocked by Berriman, their confirmed second lieutenant, who laughs merrily whenever he glowers at her.

Ron finds his disgruntlement hilarious. Unlike his friends, the red-head is quite at ease with all the little pleasantries of this time. The right turns of phrases come easily to him, while Harry is still embarrassed whenever he has to fit _pray tells_ and _indeeds_ and _I should thinks_ in his sentences.

"I feel like bloody Snape," he complains under his breath. "Only I can't quite manage the same level of sarcasm."

"It is the mode of the society we keep," says Ron, amused, and somehow, it doesn't sound at all pretentious when _he_ says it. Harry shoots him a dirty look.

"Listen to you, all polite and refined," says Hermione affectionately. She's really quite impressed by how impeccable Ron's manners can be: she wouldn't have expected it of him.

"Always this tone of surprise," complains Ron good-naturedly. Then he tells them, with a shrug: "It's just like visiting Aunt Muriel, really. Mum made sure we knew all the right things to say and do and normally it's just a boring bother, but around here it's kind of a big deal and so..."

Harry wishes he had the same nonchalance, but he forgets his manners more often than not and then gets nagged or mocked by his lieutenants for it.

"You don't want to be thought uncouth, do you?" scolds Barton, disapprovingly. "It'd reflect badly on Fortuna, too, and on all of us!"

Harry wishes he could disagree. Politeness is one thing – he never liked coarse language, and anyway, he would likely hear McGonagall hissing at him in his mind if he started cursing like a sailor; but who cares about all this formality in speech?

And don't get him started on the current fashion. Between neck cloths chocking him and breeches getting tangled on him, he has come to rather despise it all. On the other hand, his beautiful green coat is awesome. As comfortable as a robe, impervious to any rain or snow or whatever the sky wants to throw at him, comfortably warm even without charms, swishing in a way that makes him feel taller. Yes, he likes it more than he admits.

Adjustment problems aside, however, things are going well. Harry rather hopes this state of things will last indefinitely.

He thinks about the war a lot more than his friends. To Ron and Hermione, it is distant, worrisome but remote; to him, it is the topic of every other sentence.

His fellow aviators talk of it all the time. If they aren't despairing about the reports of French victory after French victory, they are bragging about the British triumphs of the previous autumn, at Trafalgar, where Admiral Nelson was wounded (now _that_ is a name even Harry has heard before) and at Dover, where a daring attempt at invasion has been prevented by the awe-inspiring actions of Captain Lawrence and his Temeraire.

The Divine Wind is on everybody's lips and Fortuna is fascinated with the tales of the Chinese Celestial that somehow found himself in the British Aviation. Harry suspects she's developing a bit of a crush on a dragon she's never even met (the famous Temeraire and his Captain are travelling to China, apparently). He wisely keeps his counsel on the matter. Girls will be girls, he sighs to himself; even girls with wings.

News from the continent is often bleak – the war is growing worse and the French are collecting successes. To Harry, who feels rather detached from it all, the cacophony of fighting echoed from the battlefields is almost a source of embarrassment: tales of defeats in Prussia and Poland and Russia keeps coming in and everybody is reacting with rage or dismay; he alone has trouble caring.

Europe is falling to Napoleon's armies piece by piece, but to him, it is more history than reality.

He cannot avoid the vivid descriptions of what is presumably awaiting them at the end of their training period, however. Mess hall times if nothing else ensure he hears his share of battle accounts.

He finds himself wondering what it would be like, a fight between a dragon and a ship, or a skirmish with a patrolling formation; whether he could cope with a true battle in mid-flight; what he might do if Fortuna was ever injured.

His dragon doesn't share his concerns. She's eager for battle – something he blames the older dragons for. Her blood-thirst, regularly fanned by the other dragons, is a little frightening to him.

He does not know what he shall do when they demand he and Fortuna be deployed.

Training usually takes a couple of years and he is clinging to the respite this gives him, but he fears that the spreading war will demand their presence on the front lines sooner than he's comfortable with.

He entertains idle thoughts of simply running and wonders if Fortuna will let him. He thinks of resigning himself to the fighting and wonders if he'll find it in himself to do so. It would be the only way to secure their position in this world and the truth is, he's rather committed himself to it: he is a captain in the Aerial Corps – there's no going around that.

He also cannot deny how much the Aviation is helping him and Fortuna, nor how at ease his dragon is here, despite her standoffish and somewhat solitary nature. He doesn't want to fight in this war, but everybody else seems to want him to (except Ron and Hermione, of course) and he feels conflicted about the whole thing.

He wonders how long he'll have before having to make a choice.

The war isn't his only worry, however.

There's Hermione, who's feeling better at last, but has launched herself in a monumental endeavour (seriously, teaching dragons to read? Only Hermione!). There's his crew, two of whom have a problem with alcohol he needs to address; there's the dreadful temper of the leader of his riflemen, Wedge, who's an irritating bully Harry wishes he could get rid of. There's little Hadrian Donnel, the youngest of his runners – he's just turned nine – who's been left an orphan during the latest battle, his mother and her Longwing having both been killed, and for whom Harry feels responsible.

Hermione tells him he's taking too much upon himself and berates him for it, but Ron, at least, understands. He's a captain: who else should look after his men?

Fortuna is his main concern, however.

He frets about her health and well-being constantly, especially when odd rumours of a dangerous cold crippling dragons start circulating; and then there is the emotional side of things.

She is ridiculously jealous of his attention: she has taken to spurn Ron because Harry makes it a point to spend sometime with him almost every day. She's not happy he and Hermione are in on the secret of magic, either, but grudgingly respects the witch who is teaching her so many interesting things; Ron has no such claim to her regard.

Thankfully, the redhead takes it in stride. "With seven of us, Mum didn't always have time for everybody... you learn to get over your jealousy eventually. She'll do the same, don't worry," he says consolingly.

Harry still wishes he could reassure her. Ron is his best friend, his brother-in-arms, his most trusted confidant; but Fortuna is- _Fortuna_.

Their bond is unshakable; surely she knows that? She must be entering puberty or something, however, because she has bouts of insecurity that leave him sweating: each of them will do anything – anything at all – to prevent the other from coming to harm, but emotional crisis make Harry feel out of his depth.

Also, she can be horribly girly.

Like that matter with the goggles. Harry can only shake his head when thinking of it.

His goggles are an essential part of his life these days. There is no question of going without: the winds would make it impossible to keep his eyes open and dry them out something awful, leaving him blind; he needs his prescription glasses however and the usual _Impervius_ spell he used during Quidditch matches, while useful, doesn't guarantee that he won't lose them in mid-flight, nor that they'll survive amidst bombs and musket bullets.

After trying everything he and his friends can think of to make it easier to see while in flight, he resorts to magic to substitute the lenses of his own glasses into his flying goggles. He toys with the idea of getting goggles with specially made lenses – a friend of Ron's comes from a family of lens-makers and they would do it for a reasonable price – but in the end, magic is just easier. It means, however, that he has to keep his goggles on most of the time even when he's on the ground.

He takes some flak for it, but shrugs it off.

Fortuna, however, loves the goggles and starts making noises about having a pair for herself. But red! She really likes the colour red.

Harry, being Harry, indulges her and winces to the subsequent squeals. Who would have ever thought he'd come to see a huge, vigorous, belligerent dragon _squealing_ like a little girl over a pair of huge, red goggles!

Though she quickly grows tired of the nuisance having her eyes covered is (dragons don't need protection from the winds), while it lasts it is just about the cutest thing ever.


	6. Six Months

_**Six Months**_

The sweet young woman with the gorgeous chestnut hair is glancing coyly at him again and Ron finds himself caught between a smile and a grimace.

He relaxes with his beer, letting the laughter of his friends spill all around him and the warmth and noise of the pub sooth him. Drinking nights with the lads are a cherished time.

His days are incredibly busy since he got his gloves – the hardy hide gloves with the Corps' insignia on them that tell anyone in the know he's a Leather Master: glancing down, he clenches and unclenches his hands a few time, looking at them with unabated satisfaction.

They're stained something awful, because he's experimenting with all sorts of plant combinations in an effort to recreate some of Hagrid's potions for enhancing the sturdiness or the flexibility of leather, and because he likes dying his hides before using them, but he won't go without. He's earned them.

His creations are highly sought after, both because they're invariably high quality (magic guarantees it) and because his designs are new around here, and quite inventive; he is often swamped with requests.

He hasn't given up his role as Fortuna's harness-tender, either, though he gets some help – an armourer he quite likes, Hallow, who's ever ready to try out his slightly odd ideas for improvements and takes as much satisfaction as Ron does from a thick, solidly stitched, well-oiled harness, and a gunner he doesn't like half as much, Birne, who is more concerned with gambling than with his job and has a propensity to sneer at people nastily, though really, he has nothing on Snape and anyway, Ron soon discovers that being invariably cheerful pisses the git off most satisfactorily.

Even so, it's almost impossible to fit all his daily duty in a single day.

Coming to the pub a few evenings a week is practically a requirement for his sanity, almost as important as the quiet chats and laughter he shares with Harry and Hermione and the dragons in the darkness of the courtyard.

The village is very hospitable to people from the Covert: half the locals go into service and a good number of Ron's new friends are coming down as much for seeing family, or a sweetheart, as for the beer and company. The local girls, too, are usually welcoming – and apparently his quick promotion and bright prospects make him an attractive match; his tall frame is not doing him any disservice either, judging by the looks he receives, or maybe it's his red hair (he's overheard some of them giggling over it and was quite pleased).

None have been so forward as the chestnut-haired barmaid, however.

Her name's Seònaid and she's the daughter of the blacksmith, he knows; she's sweet and lively and definitely beautiful. Short, a bit on the thin side, but as the saying goes, good things come in small packages. And her curves are definitely a good thing.

She's no Hermione, though.

Ron downs his beer and signals for another and when she comes over with her inviting smile, he reflects that he really ought to let her down gently. He likes her well enough, and he's flattered by her interest, but he's a one-woman man and that's that.

"Bonnie lass, and cannie too," chuckles his mate Burrell, Invictus' ground crew chief, plopping himself by his side and invading his personal space with a heavy whiff of alcohol.

She is, but Hermione's more so. Ron won't say it though. In the current circumstances, that's just inviting troubles.

"She's all yours," he jokes instead.

"Ah-ha! Bad form, Weasley!" Burrell crows and points at him then laughs himself half out of his seat. "Ah ken tha' look! Ye're thinkin' of Miss Education, ye are! Ah dinnae ken why, lad, away wae the fairies, tha' one is. Wantin' ta bed her, ha!... Yer aff yer heid!"

The thickness of the man's brogue is generally directly proportional to his drunkenness levels and Ron has learned not to take offence to anything he says after a few pints. He never remembers a thing in the morning anyway.

He can't help scowling, however. Hermione's crusade for the education of dragons is not garnering much approval – predictably – but he never could stand his beloved being insulted.

"Now, now, Weasley! Dinna fash yersel! 'Tis all in jest!" Burrell belches rudely. "A feel no weel. Need 'nother pint."

"Imagine that," murmurs Ron, rolling his eyes, but hands the man his own beer anyway, and gets a cheerful "Here's tae ye!" for it, and the chance to change the topic.

It's not like he can properly defend Hermione from these slurs, unfortunately.

There is no denying that she's... revolutionary (which is brilliant, but far too modern for these unappreciative fools).

He could try to silence them with his fists – Merlin knows, he'd fight for her under any circumstances and has done so a few times since they were trapped here – but his taking offence on her behalf (and so vehemently) gives rise to another problem entirely.

The thing is that, as he's learned, having a relationship with a woman the way he intends it is just not done. Even hanging out with Hermione like he and Harry do, without a marriage or at least a betrothal, is frowned upon.

Oh, dragon captains do it without much thought, especially the women, because they need heirs for their dragons and "shouldn't be boggled down by wifely duties for it" (Hallow's words, not his); but Hermione's not a captain and neither is Ron and if there wasn't some confusion due to Harry's presence in their trio, the gossip would tear them to shreds soon enough.

He doesn't much care, for himself, but his girlfriend is having enough difficulties as it is and he doesn't want to add to her burden.

The whole thing is stupid, of course. So Hermione and he are not married... far as he's concerned, that's just a detail.

Try telling the people of this time, though.

It's a sin, the earnest parson explains to him; the concept is baffling to Ron – the wizarding world is for the most part atheist, religion has never had much sway over it. But here, it's everywhere and while aviators have a very cavalier attitude towards it, they seem to think the rest of the world _should_ live by it.

He's vaguely irritated by the odd morals.

It's not that he would object to marriage – he'd wed her in a heart-bit, of course, if she would take him (though she thinks they're too young, and he doesn't entirely disagree); but he'd rather do it for better reasons than just to silence the scandalmongers, and without being maimed by his Mum when they'll get back, for making her miss the ceremony.

It's not that he cares what they say behind his back, either (Hermione's take on the whole thing is that they should ignore it, and go about their business, to which he would agree heartily, except that people here just won't let them). He's long since decided he doesn't care if they think him a besotted fool; it's Hermione he worries about.

Considering how invested she is in her schooling project and how important an impeccable reputation is if she hopes to find any backers, financial or even just moral, Ron is very, very careful about it all.

Besides, what can he do?

Yelling doesn't do much good (he's tried) and explaining just doesn't cut it (they're thick-heads, in his opinion, but also, he's going against the times). There's duelling, in theory, but it is for gentlemen more than for normal folk and it is forbidden in the Aerial Corps besides, (well, it is forbidden to aviators, technically, but anybody in the service abides by the rule) and anyway, the notion is outdated even in the wizarding world, not to mention he wouldn't be able to wield a sword or a pistol (and can't use his wand).

Perhaps a betrothal could be a sufficient compromise... but really, the best thing to do is simply not bring his relationship up; not that he can hide his loving her, and certainly doesn't want to, but not attracting attention to it is doable.

The point, after all, is not to stand out in this situation they've found themselves in and Hermione, bless her soul, is doing too much of that already, what with her offering lessons to dragons and advocating their rights.

Dragons going to school. Only Hermione, really.

A smile stretches his face at the mere thought. Merlin, he loves her so much!

Which is why he won't have her maligned, especially by a drunken Scot who probably doesn't even clearly remember who she is right now. Still, he'd rather avoid the whole headache. Redirection is in order. "So how's your sister?" he asks feigning interest in the one topic that invariably seizes Burrell's attention. "That coal merchant of hers still bothering her?"

Burrell snickers. "Nae danger. Lassie told 'im he's as welcome as water in a holed ship..."

Ron lets the tale unfold paying little attention, until a cry of "Oh ye scunner that hurt!" disrupts the other side of the pub. One thing he can count on: there's always some hot-headed fool who ends up starting a fight. Tonight it's Harry's bully of a lead rifleman, Wedge.

Ron rolls his eyes at the scene, but is fighting a grin all the same. He will never admit to his beloved how much _fun_ these pub brawls are.

Life goes on. Harnesses tear and have to be repaired; he comes up with a better netting to store grenades; he finally finds some royal helleborine in a patch of sandy soil and puts it to good use. Hermione's efforts continue to baffle and irritate the humans as much as they delight the dragons; worrying rumours about dragons dying of colds in Wales reach them, making Harry and just about any other Captain nearly panic – though to his best friend's relief it seems as if the younger dragons are not affected by what is already starting to be called a plague in the southern areas.

The three friends' nightly chats now veer more and more towards training mishaps and syllabus shuffling, with nary a mention of their world, the family they're missing... or the Doctor.

Pub nights are mostly filled with roaring laughter and drinking games, the louder and wilder the worst is the news from the front lines.

A string of defeats throughout the continent makes it sound as if Europe is a castle of cards ready to blow up at the slightest addition, and Napoleon the winning player of this giant game of exploding snap.

Ron can't bring himself to care much, but he refrains from admitting this out of respect for his new friends.

There are also the reports of more and more dragons falling ill, to worry about; the threats against trade with the Americans due to the blockade, and speculations of what the restrictions might mean for British folk, to discuss; the odd stories from the lowlands, of people disappearing in the moors and in the woods, of fairies weaving invisible webs to trap incautious men, to marvel or scoff at.

Ron doesn't know whether to believe those last accounts. Is there a magical world here or not? They haven't found any wizards, but maybe there's magical creatures – besides the dragons, that is. He's never heard of fairies doing anything so complicated as weaving traps, but then he'd never heard of dragons solving equations either, so who knows what's possible, really?

Of course, disappearances somewhere in the Scottish countryside aren't much more than fancy tales to most people. There are more prosaic crisis much closer to home.

Like Captain Doyle attempting to drown himself in whiskey when his first lieutenant, whom the poor bloke is in love with, gets called away to Gibraltar to take over captaining her maimed mother's Xenica, Pernix, and as everybody knows, there's very little hope Doyle's Amata, a bashful Pascal's Blue, will ever be assigned to the same formation.

Or young Mick's fate – the smart lad who'd been training with one of the other Leather Masters, up until he lost an arm in a horrible accident, and didn't Ron wish he knew any mediwizardry right then, secrecy be damned!

The rumours about faerie traps and people disappearing continue to worry Ron, especially since they are starting to become more insistent, but for everybody else, local concerns and the ever-looming war take precedence. The fighting might be all the way over to the continent, but to most people it is more immediate than the woods on the other side of the hills.

Another night, another round of beer.

Everybody's toasting young Wyatt, who's a proud new father. Ron watches as Seònaid hands the dazed bloke a free whiskey and then she catches his eye, blushing profusely but with bright and hopeful eyes. He pretends not to notice her and lends his voice to the cheers.

Harry enters the pub half-way through the evening and he catches Ron's eyes long enough to exchange a smile before he's pounced upon by everybody else.

"Well, Potter? What tidings? Come and talk – let's have a beer for him!" The call goes up in many voices and Ron joins the eager group around his best friend.

Harry and Fortuna have been going to Edinburgh rather often as of late: the dark-haired wizard suspects it's because Captain Moreton wants them to familiarize with as many dragons and aviators as they can, possibly in the hope they'll find someone they can truly get along with.

"Either that, or she's hoping to use us as mavericks, sending us to whatever formation might need us, but never on a permanent basis," he confides to Ron. "Some of the lads are convinced we'll end up as independents. But who knows what Celeritas has in store?"

There is no denying that Harry is thrilled and who could blame him? Not only it is a chance to fly in relative freedom, it also gives him some unofficial status within the Corps, that's helping him fit in. Fresh news is a precious commodity at the rather isolated Covert.

"For Heaven's sake, Potter, drink if you must, but share your news!" is the typical cry whenever he returns. "You're not very good to be keeping it to yourself while we are all in the dark!" and "Here we are, without any idea of what's going on – have pity on us!"

It is a familiar refrain by now and one that Harry laughingly enjoys.

Ron invites himself along on those trips whenever he can get away with it, which isn't anywhere near as often as he would like.

Travelling at top speed miles above the ground, the rush of wind all around and the harsh, majestic beauty of the ever-changing Scottish landscape beneath... he loves it as much as his best friend does.

He wishes he had more time for it, but even at Fortuna's speed, the journey to Edinburgh takes over three hours – which people here consider amazing, because of the distance (it would take five days in a carriage, and that with good weather), but to Ron is unbelievably long.

Then again, they have nothing like the floo, or even trains. London is 17 days away by carriage, an impossibly long journey to a wizard; even the mere ten and a half hours as a courier dragon flies seem a bit much to him.

"How do Muggles cope with it?" he wonders more than once.

"It puts things into perspective, doesn't it?" asks Hermione, amused by his bewilderment.

It certainly explains how hard it is to stay up-to-date on current events.

Ron knows that Harry, even more than him, finds the uncertainty and lack of regular news unsettling. The _Daily Prophet_ might have been a ministerial rag scribbled by the worst sort of brown-nosers, but at least it came every day. The newspapers delivered to the Covert on a somewhat uncertain schedule are unreliable, filled with uninformative articles, outright speculations and vivid descriptions that are more fiction than fact. Harry finds it nerve-wrecking and he is not the only one.

The trips to the Edinburgh Covert help a little with this: they always have a few hours worth of time, while the dispatches are read and answered to and so on, and Harry makes friends more easily there, especially among the Winchesters and their captains, who by nature of their tasks never stay too long in one place and are happy to stop and chat (and trade gossip) with almost anyone they meet.

Whenever he gets to go, Ron, too, brings back a wealth of information, some of it thrilling, some grave, some just idle gossiping, but all of it welcome at the Covert.

Edinburgh, while still out of the loop in most things, is much less isolated; the aviators hanging about the barracks yard tend to have fresher news and Harry and Ron can sneak into town to gather the rumours in the pubs more easily than others, not least because they can discreetly glamour their clothes and avoid the unwarranted suspicion Harry's uniform, in particular, would gather.

Aviators really have a bad reputation.

If Ron is with him, the two of them sometimes dare a longer jump: they can't get all the way to London, of course, but Newcastle isn't out of their apparition range and it is a full week closer to the capital by carriage and a mere eight hours from it for a courier dragon. It makes a lot of difference, and it is worth having to make up tales of obliging soldiers or coy merchant daughters to explain away their knowledge. Nobody looks too deeply into it, anyway: they're all too starved for news to care where it comes from.

The quick, unsanctioned apparitions start as a way to ensure they continue being sent to Edinburgh for as long as possible; they become a way to improve Harry's relationship with the other aviators and he grows to cherish it; besides, as he tells Ron with an impish grin, he likes the cloak-and-dagger feel of it.

Hermione, predictably, shudders at the idea of flying herself but encourages their escapades so that they can bring her back more books. There aren't anywhere near enough to satisfy her at hand.

At Marymas, most of the Covert gathers in the village square to toast a bannock on a fire in honour of the Virgin Mary.

Seònaid, Ron notices, is chatting with the miller's wife, a grey-looking, irritable woman he's only had the displeasure to meet once. She has her youngest bairn with her, that Ron knows will go into service soon enough. It's quite common in the village, to give the younger sons and sometimes the daughters up to the Aviation. The poor mother doesn't look happy at the idea, but then she seldom looks anything but tired and sour.

He catches Seònaid's eye and smiles warmly at her, because it's just like her, to comfort someone nobody much likes.

The young woman colours, embarrassed and pleased, and Ron almost winces. He really ought to set her straight – _soon_.

His eyes seek out Hermione with the naturalness of habit. She's holding an impromptu meeting about dragon rights tonight, to the bewilderment of many (and the jeering cheers of some).

She's never quite grasped what 'laying low' means, Ron feels, but he just regards her fondly. Hermione wouldn't be Hermione if she wasn't trying to better the world, one hopeless cause at a time.

"But dragons are intelligent!" she is protesting quite earnestly – and loudly. "They should be given equal rights, they deserve it. Only ignorant fools would consider them a threat that should be got rid of. No-one of sense would hold dragons in poor regard..."

He knows where this is going. He's heard this particular rant before. Soon enough, she'll be complaining about the "corrupt Parliament who refuses to see dragons deserve a say in their own lives".

His smile widens without conscious thought.

"Ye love her, don't ye?" asks Seònaid quite out of the blue, startling him so badly that he sloshes his beer all over his shirt.

"Blimey, lass! Warn a man!"

He looks at her, irritated, and freezes. Her eyes are so sad.

She's disappointed, but understanding. She's very, very beautiful.

She still doesn't hold a candle to Hermione.

"No one who's not in love would put up with her silly notions without even a grumble," she says with a nod to Hermione, launched in her passionate speech and positively glowing in Ron's eyes. Seònaid tries being catty, but it isn't in her nature, not really, and her tremulous smile betrays her. A moment later she sighs: "I'm sorry. I hope yer disappointment will be brief."

This baffles Ron quite thoroughly. "What?"

"She's a lady, an' ye'r not. Don't think ye'll go very far with wantin' her," Seònaid says simply.

Ron can only gape.

"She's so very smart, and all refined, if rather weird. It's no wonder ye wish to court her." The young woman sighs despondently, her disappointment keen, but she makes a real effort to be encouraging. "Suppose ye'd be sweet together, if it was possible."

"Huh... thanks?"

Then she bravely tells him: "Ye should know, people are talkin' about her and Captain Potter havin' an understandin'."

He almost laughs out loud at that. Thank Merlin, the time when he was jealous of Harry is long past; the kind accusation doesn't faze him. He refrains, because she wouldn't understand, and it's not fair, not when she's so earnest, and trying her best to be a friend.

Ron appreciates it. He hopes she'll find an amazing man to make her happy soon.

A few days after that Seònaid disappears.


	7. Seven Months

_**Seven Months**_

Ron isn't the only one who's growing frightened by the odd disappearances. He is taking it particularly badly, however, and Hermione does not know how to help and reassure her boyfriend.

The group of local girls that has vanished most recently, from the meadows where they were picking daisies for Michaelmas, seems to be the last straw for the village, especially since it comes on the heels of a mounting number of peat cutters and hunters, and a few shepherds – all people familiar with the region and unlikely to be caught in common dangers.

Mothers keep their children inside, men arm themselves even to cross the road and reach the pub, pleads for protection are sent to the Covert insistently (but would be taken more seriously if the aviators didn't have other concerns to contend with, the worrisome dragon plague _in primis_ ).

Whispers of supernatural perils grow bolder.

Of course, they've been hearing such things from the very start and naturally, their attention had been caught at first, less because of the potential danger than because it might have been a sign of magic, Hermione has to admit.

So far, the majority of those they've talked with has dismissed them as silly superstitions; people rather talked about the treachery of the moors, the danger of the woods... and although the wizards knew there was a slight chance it might be something more, Hermione had found no reason to lend the tales much credence.

Except that there is no satisfactory explanation to be found in the common world, as the most superstitious point out with foreboding glee.

People disappear without a trace, without an apparent reason; there have been sightings of strange light-shows in a couple of places (though unfortunately, the accounts are confusing); the parties who search the areas report feeling as if invisible threads caressed their skin and made them stumble when they ran.

Tales of faerie mischief abound, more and more fanciful with every recounting.

Hermione keeps track of all the clues, as much as she can in a time and place where the exchange of information is unreliable at best; she is attempting to put together a map of the disappearances – Harry's idea: he wishes to search the areas in person, as well as to warn people off if possible – and to come up with a timeline of sorts – Ron's contribution: he thinks having a clearer idea of the whens will help with the whos and hows.

"Could it really be fairies, do you think?" asks Harry, puzzled and pensive.

Fortuna, always eager for tidbits of magical knowledge, sighs ponderously: "It would be famous if it was. Real fairies! I want to meet them!"

"No, you don't," snorts Hermione gently. "Fairies are tiny, petty, impish annoyances."

Fortuna snorts a laugh.

"They might not be. Dragons are different in this world, why not other magical creatures?" argues Harry, but without heat.

"Whatever it is, I wish we could track it down and stop it," mutters Ron with some viciousness in his tone.

Hermione fights to tamp down her jealousy. Her boyfriend is beside himself over the disappearance of that barmaid who was forever flirting with him, and it bothers her; she really doesn't like how she has to focus on how terrible it is that the girl is missing, not a blessing in disguise at all. She's better than this, she really is. Besides, she knows Ron loves her.

"We should investigate," says Ron, fidgeting where he's sat on the ground. "We should do _something_."

"We certainly have experience with solving mysteries and stopping mystifying creatures from attacking innocents," jokes Harry – which derails the conversation, because Fortuna jumps up with loud requests of hearing the whole tale, and that takes time, and a few of the other dragons are eager for it too, not to mention the cadets who gather round to listen, though of course they think it's just fanciful tales.

And there goes the night.

Of course they'll investigate, thinks Hermione – it's what they do.

She won't ever mention that a part of her finds it inconvenient.

Not that she would ever balk at helping someone in need – that goes without saying – and there is no question about the importance of figuring this mystery out, as soon as possible: people have gone missing, in circumstances that leave little hope for their survival. There is no place for petty or selfish concerns.

Still, she cannot help but wish it wasn't happening, or at least, not right now: she is so very busy (at long last!).

Her _School of Learning for Accomplished Dragons_ is, in her humble opinion, a resounding success.

Sure, most aviators still think her mad and the British public doesn't even know of it yet, but it is early days still, a mere few weeks since she started. They still lack most essentials, she's practically running it from the courtyard of the Covert (not that classrooms would be practical, given the size of her pupils), what little official recognition she has is mostly due to her insistence on formally calling it a school at every opportunity and she's the only lecturer so far... but all in all, it is coming along nicely.

And the dragons love it.

All of those assigned to the Covert have joined and to the shock and bafflement of most aviators, they attend eagerly and dutifully; it is quite a sight, a cluster of dragons crowding together, the bigger, reddish, golden or cream and black forms hunched over the smallish, grey or purple lightweights; looming over her, listening to her in fascination, peppering her with intelligent questions – it fills her with satisfaction.

Aviators curse and grumble, whine and protest, but many a captain is being brought around to her way of thinking on the matter of education by his or her dragon's unbridled enthusiasm.

She's quite proud of herself – and of her pupils even more.

There is so much to do, however!

All sorts of interesting problems keep arising.

Books – her beloved books – are the first hurdle. That they are too small, the witch can easily see and fix; but it is not the biggest problem.

"How am I to turn the pages?" asks Fortuna diffidently the first time Hermione presents a much enlarged tome for her perusal, in a hidden glade where they've flown to use magic discreetly.

The witch is stumped.

"I- I suppose someone could be asked to turn the pages for you, like for a musician," she says uncertainly.

"Sounds boring," mutters Harry. "Who would do it?"

"Well, with magic it would be easy, just enchanting them to turn on their own with a vocal command, but we can't do that!" points out Hermione, rather cross.

She's upset at the small range of available books in general, too: most people are woefully uneducated by her standards. That what few titles are to be found can't be easily used is a serious disappointment.

Writing is out of the question, the claws just don't afford the right coordination. Maybe if they had marker pens – except of course they'd be too small... perhaps brushes? Those can be made of the most opportune size; but the problem of talons remain.

Dictating is the way to go, at least for now.

Luckily, Captain Joulson, the old aviator who more or less supervises the cadets' studies, feels that reading textbooks aloud will do his young charges a world of good: so the children are pressed into service as appointed readers and note-takers for the dragons, to everybody's satisfaction but their own.

The lack of blackboards is a constant source of irritation (it is just not practical to procure big enough sheets of paper all the time) and she debates with herself whether 'inventing' them would be cheating; Ron rolls his eyes and tells her she's being silly, there's nothing wrong with it, but she still frets, at least until she finds out by chance that they do exist, only they're more often called chalkboards, and used almost exclusively for music education and composition.

"Though the Americans use them more widely, I've seen it myself a few years ago," offers the listless Lieutenant Ferguson, recently promoted and even more recently grounded by the dragon he's serving with having fallen ill. "I was still an ensign then, on Victoriatus. We were to escort a Mr. Baron, a mathematician, who was to do some lecturing over there; and I reckon the Admiralty wanted to make a show of force, because sending a Regal Copper was nothing short of an intimidation move. The Americans have no aviation to speak of, you see. I was prodigiously glad of the chance," he tells her, reminiscing with a wan smile. "But anyway, Professor Baron was keen on using chalk to write on those slates of his and though we found it strange, nobody bat an eye at it on the other side of the ocean. It was quite commonplace, I suppose."

Upon Hermione's request, he thoughtfully allows that he might know how to procure big enough slates, properly black or at least dark grey.

A few more grounded officers let themselves be roped in the task. The witch tries to ignore that it is because they're dispirited and desperate for a distraction from their worry about the sickness spreading through the dragons, rather than because they believe her efforts valid.

She has, in her insatiable thirst for knowledge, at some point memorized a recipe for coloured chalk (which makes the servants mutter and look at her askance, including as it does, ground chalk, dyes and _porridge_ – she isn't altogether sure the porridge is necessary, since it was recommended by the Weasley twins, but they were undisputed geniuses after all, so she decides to trust the recipe); with Ron's help she soon has satisfactory tools for giving her lectures.

What to teach, besides the basics of literacy, is also a matter to think over carefully. Most of her own education won't do, after all, since there is to be no mention of magic. Nor does she trust herself with history, for obvious reasons.

She can handle things like English literature (with a bit of care for the timelines), astronomy and mathematics, however, and the last seems to interest the greatest number of dragons, so she focuses on that.

There are some high and lows; at times, she finds herself torn between irritation and hilarity.

None of the dragons are shy when it comes to express their opinion of something, be it delight (often wild and loudly explicit) or dissatisfaction (which can make them terribly mulish, especially the younger ones).

"I do not see why you should be allowed to move terms here and there as you please, and equal it all to zero in such a way," complains one of her star pupils, the Longwing Priscus, who's not even two months old and already on his way to be an excellent astronomer.

His orange eyes are stubbornly displeased with the rules of algebra. "What is the point of it all, besides? Sarah, tell her," he whines to his captain. "Tell her she can't just make the unknowns and coefficients jump all over like that!"

Captain Sarah Winyard, looking terribly alarmed, quickly demurs: "I'm afraid I have no notion of all this, my dear. But she's your teacher: ought you not trust her to teach?"

"But she just shifts things around as it's convenient to her!"

"I do not!" protests Hermione, fighting down an exasperated laugh. "Cross-multiplying is a perfectly allowable tool to solve equations!"

He does not look convinced in the least.

To her delight, however, once a dragon has grasped a concept, they are often willing to share their insight with the other students, making them excellent tutors in a very natural way.

"Here," says the older, placid Cadwaladr, whose silent captain, Derec Jones, has a fondness for Euclide which he shared with her class, in a show of support for the School that Hermione is very grateful for.

The large white dragon moves easily to lay beside the young Longwing and starts scratching lines in the sandy gravel of the courtyard with his incredibly long claws: "You can better understand it all if you consider the ratios as those of similar triangles..."

Hermione glows with pride, but Captain Jones offers her only a restrained smile.

She is uncomfortably aware that she would not be met with half as much willingness if the captains weren't desperate for some distraction for their dragons.

The plague from the South is spreading: it is by now obvious that the 'cold' is nothing as simple as that; dragon surgeons are at a loss. Quarantine policies are starting to be implemented; the Covert is to be kept as isolated as possible. Very few couriers are allowed, all communications with other Coverts are carefully screened; no one is allowed to fly even so far as Edinburgh anymore, Harry and Fortuna are forbidden from leaving the grounds entirely, as are all other dragons.

Nobody complains, of course – the horror stories of dragons _dying_ of this illness are sufficiently frightening to warrant even stricter measures, in the view of many. Still, complete inaction is hard to cope with. Dragons and humans alike are restless, the boredom made worse by subtle, tenacious fear.

Even so, not all aviators are supportive of Hermione's efforts; some are outright hostile.

"Here now, what sort of nonsense have you been filling my dragon's head with?" grumbles one of the older captains, red-faced and spluttering. "He has been muttering at all hours about some mathematical nonsense, of which I am sure I have no notion myself!"

"I would be happy to educate you alongside him," replies Hermione sweetly, and watches as he chokes on his indignation.

But the man is not the only one who shows signs of jealousy – of their dragons' becoming more accomplished than they are, but even more often, of the high consideration the dragons hold her in.

"Dragons ought to be concerned with battles and tactics, not bloody poetry!" they spit.

"I don't need any damn notion of philosophy, I should think, and neither does my dragon!" and "Printing books for dragons! What next? Should they publish their own?" and "What absurdity – you'll tell us we're all to go back to the schoolmasters, just for the sake of holding a conversation with our dragons!"

Some shake their heads at her in disgust: "Ideas all over the place, that woman," they say. "Can't be bothered to raise a proper family, oh no, she's to subvert our dragons instead!"

"Putting herself forward in so shameless a way, it's disgraceful," others mutter behind her back, not caring whether she hears their spiteful grumblings. "What would a civilian know about the real needs of the Aviation?" and "Look at her, making them worry about correct use of language instead of their manoeuvres as is proper, it's a right shame she's listened to!" and "Absurd stuff. Mark my words, it shan't last..."

She clenches her hands in the fabric of her dresses to keep calm, and keeps her head high as she goes about her business, not letting the grumblings discourage her.

It's not like she hasn't coped with this kind of hostility before; at least this time, unlike with S.P.E.W., her friends are a hundred percent supportive.

"What you're doing is great," reassures her Ron, firmly. "It's helping dragons so much, and people too, in the long run: they just can't see it yet. You can't let a few grumblers stop you. It's too important."

"Don't waste your time fretting about those idiots," is Harry's smiling advice. "Focus on how many are willing to help."

And Fortuna sniffs haughtily: "I don't know that any captain worthy of the name should be unhappy with their dragon learning things. I'm sure my Harry doesn't mind!" she says loudly, loyal and smug in equal measure.

At least the higher ranked aviators do not openly oppose her, even if Captain Moreton is not particularly pleased with it all. "It's a load of nonsense, is what it is; there's more than enough for the young ones to learn for the fighting, without going looking for troubles with poetry and music and whatnot."

Because the dragons are clamouring about music lessons, now.

The idea is launched by two friendly Yellow Reapers who happened to be at Dover the previous autumn, for the great battle and the following celebrations. As they happily explain, Captain Laurence of Temeraire and Captain Harcourt of Lily – heroes of the great victory on the southern shores of England – organized a small concert for all the dragons.

"It was so very pleasant!" enthuses Silvana, whose lithe grace and burning orange eyes make Hermione think of a fierce tiger, but who is really a very mild-mannered and sweet dragon.

"Yes," agrees the other, Vivax, bobbing his enormous head up and down in his enthusiasm and almost knocking a little Greyling about. His captain, as young and as vivacious as the dragon himself, laughs at his antics. "And the musicians were nice. They were so very scared at first, but when they saw that we liked the music, they were more happy to play and it was delightful."

"This one man, he was very patient and answered all our questions and played for us from different composers, so that we may understand the differences," recounts Silvana dreamily. "I wish we could have concerts more often."

Captain Moreton shoots down the idea flatly, but Hermione isn't inclined to give up so easily.

"It's such a perfect thing," she explains to Ron and Harry warmly. "Just think about it! Keeping the dragons penned up and away from society increases the fear they inspire. If we can arrange for situations where the dragons can mingle with people, in a way that shows they're sensitive and intelligent, everybody will eventually get used to the idea and stop being frightened!"

"I think you're being optimistic," cautions Ron, but Hermione knows she's right; with her enthusiastic approval, a small group of dragons is soon formed, who discuss music – what little they know of it – on a weekly basis and even try out some singing – a venture that is quickly ended, because it makes every glass surface in an impressive radius rattle and leaves people's ears ringing unpleasantly.

There is a fine line between a nice, full, powerful singing voice and just out and out screaming on pitch. Dragons, it turns out, have the kind of lungs capacity that causes their notes to be much harsher and louder than expected, even from beasts of their bulk.

The singers are very pleased with themselves, but their captains all but promise to hire string quartets for them every month, if they would just _stop_.

"Oh, I so wish I could learn to play an instrument," declares Silvana, the Yellow Reaper with musical inclinations, wistfully.

"Pray, just leave such things to the professionals," hastily replies her alarmed captain, likely imagining the size such an instrument ought to be, and what kind of resounding noise it might produce.

Diplomatically, Hermione suggests they put their effort into reading and writing poetry instead. Just as creative, not nearly as loud.

The younger ones are happily excited to discover they have very good memories for verses.

"We should have an evening recitation!" says Vivax exuberantly, catching Hermione completely by surprise. "It would be infamous not to have a chance of showing what we can do!"

"Oh, yes, let's!" yells Fortuna with glee. "I shall learn a poem to recite for it, and it shall be the longest!"

Vivax and Priscus at once protest this claim, and as they bicker Harry mutters apologetically to the other two captains: "She's got a prima donna streak in her. We shan't escape the recitation now, I fear, not without a great deal of tantrums."

"Well, I think it's a splendid idea," proclaims Hermione, smiling proudly.

Within herself, she thinks, more and more enthusiastically: _And if they see what you can do, maybe they'll realize how important it is that all of you be educated, and given political rights!_

It is probably out of the question right now, but once the war is over and things calm down, perhaps...

If she could, she'd spend all her time on working out the perfect syllabus and persuading others to teach alongside her. Under the circumstances, that's not to be.

Two dragons have fallen ill here in the Covert; they have been promptly quarantined, but the fear of a contagion remains. Everybody is doing what little they can to prepare for the worst, should it come to pass: Hermione herself helps as much as she is able.

The worrisome sickness makes it so that the inexplicable disappearances are not a priority with anyone but the three magicals; Hermione knows they have no choice by to crack the mystery themselves. It's not only Ron's resoluteness that pushes them: they are all determined to put a stop to the whole thing and dispel the fearfulness that pervades the villagers (who no longer dare venture beyond the cultivated fields close to their homes).

"I know you would prefer to have time for your School... and with the plague..." says Ron, half-apologetic, half-defiant.

"Nonsense," says Harry strongly. "This is important."

And Hermione, nodding in agreement, briskly summarizes their latest findings, or delineates their newest proposal, while her boys listen and build upon it. Exactly like they've always done back home.

She tries her best to reassure her boyfriend, when they're alone, that she's fully committed to finding the missing people, but she suspects he senses how torn she is, between wanting to investigate (because of course she does: _it's what they do_ ) and yet having so much to do, with the School and all.

He never says a word and for that, she's grateful.

She wonders if she isn't growing old. Time was, she could keep up with all her homework, independent study, side-projects and leisure reading, and still save the world alongside Harry. What happened to her infamous organisational skills?

Ah, well.

It's just a matter of time management, she's sure. Perhaps a colour-coded weekly schedule will help.


	8. Eight Months

_**Eight Months**_

It is at the very end of September that Harry and Fortuna get a completely unexpected and almost baffling assignment to London.

"We're allowed to leave the Covert?" clarifies the wizard captain, unable to believe his ears.

Captain Moreton, looking beyond weary, just sighs deeply: "You'll not spend the night at any other Covert and your route will stay well clear of any quarantined area. Indeed, you are not to even think of deviating from the course we'll give you. But yes, you'll go. It is a risk... but a calculated risk."

Celeritas and Salvius, who are both present and watchful, observe her as she paces tiredly to and fro, but they say nothing, the former's anxiety experiencedly contained, the latter's limited to nervous jerks of his striped body.

"The last dispatch I received bore confirmation of our worst fears," she says at last, reluctantly. "The Plague is everywhere. There is no hope of stopping it, not anymore. And there is no cure."

"Everywhere?" whispers Harry in horror.

"Dover, Portsmouth, Middlesbrough... the breeding grounds in Wales and Halifax; even Gibraltar... Everywhere the couriers went on their rounds; everywhere." Captain Moreton is grim, her tones clipped. "The Irish breeding grounds have been spared so far, God willing it'll last: all the eggs are being sent there, or to a more secret location, for safekeeping."

She pauses, then asks, with hope tinged by fear: "Fortuna is well, still?"

"Not a cough or a sneeze; she is perfectly hearty," answers Harry with unconcealed relief.

"God be thanked." She nods briskly and hands him his orders: "We've prepared our own eggs for transport, all the hardening ones at least: we cannot risk any hatchling by keeping them here, not when we have already five coughing dragons quarantined. You'll take them to London, and they'll be sorted from there. We'll keep the ones who aren't likely to hatch soon, in the hope that..."

She trails off instead of completing the sentence: hope doesn't come easily in the wake of news from the South, where more and more dragons are dying.

They have discovered with mingled relief and dismay that their isolated Covert has been spared the worst of it. Despite the awful coughing and weak lamentations of their five sick dragons, none here have died yet.

The horror stories about the ones who fell ill first, back during the winter, are hard to bear: their tongues became covered in white blisters until they could not taste anything any more, they stopped eating until they wasted away, they kept coughing and coughing until they simply couldn't breath anymore. The Longwings have the worst of it: every time they cough, they spray their acid as well. Nobody wants to think of what the acid build up due to repeated violent coughing might result into.

The reports from the South leave every aviator shivering and obsessively alert for any of the known symptoms: coughing and congestion, loss of appetite. The captains observe their partners with watchful anxiety; any dragon who starts to feel weak and lethargic is a cause for utter panic. Harry checks Fortuna over a dozen times a day, terrified to find the slightest sign of a sore throat, or a damning dullness of her scales, no matter how earnestly she reassures him that she feels perfectly fine.

"Let them know about the baths, too," Moreton instructs him as he's preparing to leave for London. "It might not be much, but it is something: and we have to do what we can."

The warmth from the baths underground has indeed been helping the suffering dragons. Despite their obvious discomfort, they are stronger than any they've heard of from other Coverts and the progression of symptoms seems slower than reported from elsewhere.

"Though of course, they're only Reapers and Parnassians so far... it is the Longwings and Regal Coppers that are the worst affected: those, we're losing fast," says the senior surgeon of the Covert, Warren. "But the heat can delay the worst, of that I'm confident. They might not be healthy, but they might well last a dozen years or so: it is hopeful news, for surely we'll find a cure before then."

For once, Harry isn't thrilled at the idea of flying; he does not voice his misgivings, however.

"Fortuna is as fast as the Greylings, but she's much bigger: she can carry all the eggs at once, with a little care for the storing and rigging," he explains to his friends and crew, looking unhappy but understanding. "It means risking only her, instead of a group of lightweights."

Ron looks thoughtful, thinking over options for safely carrying the precious cargo; Hermione's eyes widen with worry, but she also fidgets until Harry, made short by his anxiety, snaps: "What?"

"Can I come along?" she rushes out in one breath.

Harry blinks: "Huh, sure. No problem. Thought you didn't want to fly?"

Hermione shrugs. She's less than thrilled, he can see that, but after a bit of coaxing she admits that she sees this as an opportunity: if she can go to London, she can plead her case about the dragons' education: "The School is doing very well, here; but it's time to spread the word," she explains.

Harry doesn't say anything. He doesn't want to discourage her, but he doubts anyone will be willing to listen to her, under the current circumstances.

Dragon after dragon is falling ill; the usual remedies, that at first gave some relief, have lost all efficacy. Coughs barely soothed pick up virulence again and again, appetites vanish at alarming rates, the death count mounts.

Hermione's School cannot possibly be of concern right now.

Indeed, the aviators they meet in London, to whom they entrust the precious eggs, cannot bring themselves to discuss anything besides the Plague – or at most, the war. Cursing Napoleon's name in ever-creative ways is a popular past-time.

The quarantined London Covert is a desolate place. Fortuna has to be kept away, of course, but the Plague doesn't spread through humans, and there are too many people with nothing to do there, so they are given a bit of a tour.

It's terrible.

The dragons who have been ill the longest, with eyes dull and unseeing with exhaustion, are a painful spectacle, almost too much to bear; their captains, unshaven and dishevelled, in filthy linen, refusing to leave their companions even for a moment, are scarcely any better.

They are told of how the Longwings who are quartered in the sand-pits are holding up better, though they do not like it in the least; of how the smallest dragons lose coherency long before their deaths, and can only lay, panting and wheezing, unable to even speak.

The rasping, hollow cough that flecks the ground before them with blood will soon be making appearances in Harry's nightmares.

What is he going to do if Fortuna should get sick?

His stomach clenches at the mere thought.

Hermione, naturally, has no luck whatsoever with her attempts.

"I cannot blame them," she admits softly. The traces of sickness and desperation are everywhere: the sight has shaken her. "The war was bad enough, I imagine, but now this plague... no, it is only natural that no-one thinks of education in the face of this." She gives a desolate look around.

News from the continent are hardly comforting. Rumours of the ongoing defeat of Prussia and of different, unexpected techniques on Napoleon's part pile up. There is talk of a Chinese dragon in France and the worry of what an alliance between their worst enemy and the country of the greatest dragon breeders in the world would mean for England is further depressing everybody's spirit.

There are noises made about Fortuna taking up Channel duty. She's still deemed too young, but they are almost past the point of caring about her inexperience, much to Harry's alarm. His reaction garners disappointed glares and stiff rebukes.

The list of catastrophe is too long to contemplate with equanimity.

Despite the fear and grimness of the situation, they steal an hour for themselves and apparate to Charing Cross Road, looking for – they don't even know what. They cannot stay away, however: the curiosity, or the hope, or whatever it is, is too strong.

Harry contemplates a street that is vastly different from the one back home, dirtier and somewhat old-fashioned to his eyes, with paving stones instead of asphalt and carriages rumbling over it; his eyes linger on the lack of a certain famous pub: only a milliner's shop stands where the Leaky Cauldron should be and Harry can sense no trace of hidden magic at all.

A few quick spells of Hermione's confirm what they have long suspected: there is no Magical London alongside the muggle one, in this universe.

"So where did you go? And did you bring back anything we can booze with?" asks his fellow captain, James Foreman, whom Harry had befriended months ago in Edinburgh, with a feeble attempt at a grin.

Amicus, his Greyling, has started to cough just the day before – a sudden light bout quickly morphing into a full out fit that left him gasping. He hasn't stopped since and is already starting to spit blood now and then. Everybody knows what this means; nobody wants to say it out loud. Foreman, however, seems determined to strive for levity (even if he doesn't leave Amicus' side for a moment).

"Sorry, couldn't find anything good," answers Harry sadly.

He trudges back to the outskirts of the city in a sombre mood. There really is no magic in this world. No way for them to go home unless the Doctor returns, no way to escape before Fortuna falls sick... but also no way to help any of their suffering friends here.

Despite having suspected it all along, despite having given up hope long before, he finds that it is still a blow.

Then he catches sight of Fortuna, grooming herself like a huge, reptilian cat, and amends his thought. Maybe all the magic in this world has gone into making the dragons what they are... Harry can live with that.

Indeed, it sounds like a perfectly acceptable trade to him.

Just so long as she stays healthy.

His friends are also slightly disappointed, but they'd prepared themselves for this likely eventuality. Ron sums it up the best: "We'll just have to figure things out by ourselves," he says with a shrug.

It takes Harry a moment to realize he's talking of the mysterious disappearances: his mind is too focused on the Plague.

Hermione agrees; she seizes the chance of being in the capital and buys up books from every seller she has the time to check out. Not just for her School, either: "Without a Ministry for Magic enforcing the Statute of Secrecy, there's bound to be mentions of magical creatures, if any exist," she points out. "Maybe I'll find something that will help us find the missing people."

Ron sets to read with the determination he'd once put into defending Fiercebeak.

Harry would gladly help, but Fortuna's million-questions-per-line-he-reads attitude slows him down; he spends quite a lot of time trying to remember everything he ever learned in Care of Magical Creature and Defence Against the Dark Arts, to satisfy her everlasting fascination.

Hermione's School gains many more supporters in the following weeks. With the Covert isolated and dragons rather coddled, her lectures are one of the few things keeping them distracted; furthermore, a growing number of aviators has little to do with their days. Popularity sky-rockets.

Even the dragons who're starting to cough wish to continue taking lessons and protest bitterly against the quarantine, until she is allowed to hold a class for the sick and one for the healthy, in different parts of the Covert. They all insist on attending her lectures for as long as they have strength to do so.

Harry is openly proud of his best friend – and secretly relieved that she looks so much better. His worries from the beginning of this odd adventure are finally fading.

Ron, for his part, hugs her tightly the first time he catches sight of her with a heavy book-bag slung over her shoulder (people goggle at her lugging such tomes around everywhere at first, but then, they don't know about the weight-reducing charms she's been using since her third year at Hogwarts) and teases that she's finally back to herself. She isn't, not really – her paleness and the shadow under her eyes prove it – but she does feel infinitely better than half a year ago and tells them so with a smile.

Indeed, Harry is grateful he can find consolation in his friends' well-being and in Fortuna's miraculously continuing good health, because the rest of his situation affords him no respite.

His difficulties with his fellow aviators have abated, but not entirely ended; with his access to news now as curtailed as theirs, much of his clout in the Covert disappears and the big problem of his reluctance to fight in another war regains prominence.

Insults and taunts are frequent; threats of violence increasing. He feels like the weeks of his adolescence when he would walk into the Great Hall amidst hisses and insults, feeling the heavy disapprobation of his schoolmates on his very skin, or take hidden shortcuts to avoid being ambushed by the Slytherins: an experience he would have been happy never to repeat.

Some of it is stress for their dragon's illness, and likely envy that Fortuna is still well, but it certainly doesn't help that he is so openly disinclined to take up the slack of patrolling over the Channel. Any of them would be volunteering for the front lines, if they only could. The threat of a French invasion is an ever-looming danger and his lack of eagerness in defending the country weighs heavily against him.

A Captain Henry Howard, in particular, is a pain in the ass. Arrogant, disagreeable, brave to the point of stupidity, utterly convinced of his own superiority and far too smug about his father's and his father's dragon's famous exploits in Egypt, he reminds Harry unpleasantly of Malfoy. He supposes there are such snobs in any group.

Harry's feeble interest in the war, his lack of enthusiasm for fighting, rub Howard completely the wrong way. His sense of honour is highly developed and strongly intransigent, with himself no less than anyone else: he cannot abide Harry's behaviour. That Fortuna's skill in the air completely eclipses his Mirificus heightens his dislike of the wizard captain.

He seldom passes an opportunity to insult him, belittle his achievements or accuse him of treason.

Harry knows that Howard's digs are doing a lot of damage to his reputation. He also knows he can ill-afford to ignore the matter; but he's kind of used to being reviled at intervals and after so many instances during his past among wizards, he struggles to find enough incentive to bother countering the man's provocations, or setting the gossipmongers straight. Likely as not, they'll get over it eventually.

His crew, especially Barton and Berriman, take it harder than he does. He is not so insecure as to feel his courage truly called into questions; they, however, have no way of understanding and sharing his calm confidence.

Simply put, they can't figure him out. The doubts and reluctance he has a hard time concealing disappoint them – a rather natural reaction, he admits to himself. But what can he do? He has the delicacy to leave the voicing of his true opinion of the war for the precious, unchaperoned hours he spends with Ron and Hermione, but he can hardly bring himself to feign enthusiasm for something he positively dreads.

"You're the bravest man I've ever met," tells him Barton: "How can you possibly advocate so cowardly a behaviour?"

Harry can only shrug. You have to truly live through a war and see the aftermath, before you can understand that _never again_ is the only stance you can fully support.

It wouldn't be so bad if the comments didn't hurt Fortuna. The lean dragon has sort of warmed to Barton and to the younger members of her crew – the runners and look-outs – although she still prefers it when Harry doesn't take his attention away from her to be "all serious and in-charge-y," as she pouts; that they are inclined to despise her Harry is a source of indignation and mortification both.

The only ray of light is that when Celeritas outright asks him about it – informing him they'll be deployed with Captain Winyard and Priscus, as soon as the young one is ready – and Harry replies, calmly and steadily, that he will do what is asked of him, regardless of his personal preference, the venerable dragon is satisfied.

"Enthusiasm is less essential than skill and courage, anyway," he comments indifferently, "and those, you have in spades."

His opinion carries a lot of weight and many aviators are settled by the confirmation, at least those who are inclined to like Harry. Unfortunately, the combination of wartime mentality and tempers frayed by boredom, helplessness and fear is the worst possible situation for a reluctant fighter to be a part of a military branch: Harry doubts his meal times will get less awkward any time soon.

At least his friends aren't facing the same problems.

Hermione is a much beloved teacher, even when she has to be stern, to keep her eager students in line. It is not an easy feat, to stare down a rambunctious pupil weighting twenty tons, who towers over her a good two meters; but she doesn't let herself be cowed. Midwingmen and ensigns (and a good number of captains) are awed and intimidated by her. The cadets are torn between worship and resentment for all the schoolwork that she piles on them.

Ron is still well-liked, even if he's withdrawn somewhat from his circle of friends. He seems determined to become an all-time expert on this world's folklore, all in the hope of finding something useful to track down the vanished people, or at least stop further disappearances.

Not that any more people have gone missing: the villagers are too wary, not to say fearful, of leaving the uncertain safety of their homes and close-by fields; but a lot of sheep and cattle and even a few dogs have vanished, much to their owners' irritation and mingled anxiety.

A climate of uneasiness and superstitious hardship reigns in the region.

Nobody walks around on their own; the men raise palisades around their fields and keep their sheep penned up, and drive rows of iron nails into the doors and under the windows, to ward off evil fairies; the mothers rub crosses onto their children's foreheads with garlic; the maidens pour fresh water over thresholds, to keep the carnivorous spirits away. "...For they hate fresh water," they explain seriously when Harry asks.

He does that a lot: asking people in the nearby affected villages what they've seen, what they've heard, what they think it's happening. It's a way to keep busy and out of the Covert somewhat legitimately. It's also the best way to gather information, even though it mostly results in whispered tales of fright and wonder, more and more fanciful with every eager recounting.

The magic users exchange loaded glances at the end of every reported story, but invariably, Hermione dismisses the proposed magical source as unlikely in the extreme.

"I have excluded most known magical creatures – all that should be living in this climate," she reminds them more than once.

"You can't be sure this world doesn't have more, or slightly different ones," retorts Ron. "Did you know, there are no brownies, here? None at all! Any faerie is a cruel or, at best, indifferent creature. They never get in touch with humans except to hurt them. Quite the difference, isn't it?"

Ron and Hermione end up bickering about it more often than not. Harry is generally too busy answering Fortuna's questions to take part in the discussions.

His dragon's movements are seriously restricted, to her vociferous disappointment: they don't want to risk any accidental contagion. It means going even so far as the other side of the lake is a lengthy proposition, because they have to walk; but there is enough to hear from the closest villages.

People still go to the market days, if nothing else – travelling in armed groups for safety – and then bring back a deluge of heated speculations, some trying to explain the mysterious happenings, some determined to deny them, some eagerly exaggerating the tale with horrifying details, some listing remedies and counters with unquestioned (but often not unchallenged) authority.

Everyone and their aunt has a different supernatural creature to offer to the speculation pool.

"Duergars, might be," agree the women, meaning the malicious Gray Dwarves of the Southern Uplands. "It started in the Lowlands, did it not? That's where they're from, those conning thieves," they point out, nodding gravely to each other.

"Brollachan!" spit the shepherds, crossing themselves. "Creatures of the night. Shapeless, aimless. Killers in the dark."

"Nuckelavee!" hiss the teenagers ominously, to scare the younger kids. "The Sea's own Devil!" And then they laugh; but the old folks take it seriously.

"I doot it's gaunnae get ye," threatens a granny to a gaggle of wide-eyed children. "Half dragon half man, an' manky all over – neither skin nor scales on its body! Take nae pains to run: it'll get ye anyway. The longest arms, sinewy and strong; the sharpest eyes, filled with blood. It's the Nuckelavee!"

The children scream in equal parts fear and delight at the tale, but the parents hug them closer, uneasily.

"Ridiculous," mutters Hermione, only to have the fiery old lady who, evidently, has excellent hearing, round on her, wild grey hair flying out of her head kerchief: "Haud yer wheesht, lassie! Amn't daft!"

She sounds so much like McGonagall in a snit that both Ron and Harry take a step back, eliciting a lot of sniggers.

"Think Auld Effie is touched in tha head, do ye? Think ye ken more aboot tha world? Dinnae teach yer Granny tae suck eggs, lassie!"

Hermione babbles her apologies; the children giggle and snicker and she waves her cane at them: "Ye be gone, ye wee scunners, or I'll gie ye a skelpit lug!"

They prudently make their retreat while the kids scamper.

"That couldn't be responsible for the Wastes, though, could it? And what about the invisible webs?" asks a still sceptical Hermione later. "Supposing it's even real."

All the areas where people or animals have disappeared, all the fields where the odd invisible webs can be felt, are starting to be called just that: 'the Wastes'. Harry finds it appropriate. Lost lands. At least until they manage to sort this mess out.

Ron shrugs. "Depends on the story, really, what it can do. I mean, it's just a children's tale. Not real."

"Might I remind you of a certain Tale of the Three Brothers?" interjects Harry and while he proceeds to narrate his favourite story to an eager Fortuna, the Nuckelavee goes onto the 'possible, but very, very unlikely' list on Hermione's notebook.

Said notebook is a beautiful, thick volume, bound in Ron's best water repellent leather cloth and filled with the more familiar parchment rather than with the paper that is common in these times. She's had to make her own, after all, with judicious use of magic, because the options available simply aren't convenient enough – and she can't contemplate going without the chance to take notes, as Harry jokes. She has a differently dyed one for keeping track of the school's syllabus and taking notes on what works and what doesn't in teaching dragons, too.

She often has it out while they question the villagers, to write down the varied contributions that keep flocking in.

"It's just the boobrie, my mum says," is a bossy kid's opinion and when they ask, all his friends babble over each other to explain – a giant bird, from the lochs up north, that feeds on cattle and bellows a cry more like a bull than a bird, with webbed feet and sharp teeth and black as the Earl of Hell's waistcoat!

They're certainly learning a lot of the local folklore, Harry reflects.

"A winged creature is a sensible hypothesis, though," points out Hermione. "The clusters of disappearances are far away from each other, after all..."

"Maybe they can apparate," suggests Ron.

"Or there are more than one, scattered all over," offers Harry.

"It's the Baobhan Sith, it is," say the village elders with forbidding glowers. "The White Dame. As treacherous as she's enchanting! You fall for her tricks and she'll suck the very blood out of you, leaving nothing but a pile of bones and desiccated skin behind."

"Except no-one's found any skin or bones left behind," counters Ron sensibly, and the old men glower some more.

"Can't be vampires," agrees Hermione absently. "Not at all the right feeding patterns and anyway, people disappeared during the day, too."

"They're ghouls, mark my work," tells them a frightened woman, red-haired and hunched, clasping a bevy of children close.

Ron narrows his eyes, considering the possibility, but Hermione shakes her head, muttering quietly: "That's not a ghoul's modus operandi, though."

"Make a note of it anyway," replies Ron as he always does.

Soon, her neat notebook holds dozens of pages of observations recorded in her tight script.

It is Ron who patiently compares what they hear from the people, or what he observes in the exploratory tours he's taken to make, with what they read. He can often be found scribbling furiously in between Hermione's neat lines; work is at an all-time low in any case, nobody cares much what he does with his time.

Progress is slow, but they painstakingly isolate what grains of factual truth there are in the flow of superstitious tales they're told.

And when it comes right down to it, it's the tales that do not fit with any of the folklore that stand out as creditworthy.

There's the invisible webs, for starters. Those are definitely real.

Nobody has any idea what they might be, but they are _there_. Hermione and Harry spend an entire weekend going over a field where they can feel them, these strange filaments caressing the skin: poking at them, feeling them harden or disintegrate under their fingers, trying to come up with ways of making them visible.

Unfortunately, Fortuna is seriously upset and cranky at being left behind and when Harry gets back to her side, he finds Barton in a stint because she and Mirificus, Captain Howard's Anglewing, have gone and _fought_ – an actual dragon brawl, with tail lashing and bites and clawing at each other: Salvius had to subdue both of them (an act which he is recounting loudly, puffed up with pride) and Captain Moreton is still shouting herself hoarse at them (and then she starts in on a cowed and repentant Harry).

Fortuna and Mirificus despise each other utterly: now that they're forced in closer company by the increasing number of dragons being quarantined, their relationship is even more sour. In hindsight, leaving her alone to deal with the older dragon's taunts was not the best idea.

Furthermore, it means that Harry and Howard – and both their dragons – are all grounded and forced into the most boring training exercises and chores Celeritas can come up with as punishment.

So it's up to Ron and Hermione alone to investigate the most intriguing reports of all, those of odd lights at night.

People have a lot to say about fairy rings and spots where fairies dance, of course, but usually it's all about music: tunes that have no discernible source, fiddles or bagpipes playing in the dark, eerily beautiful voices coming from underneath a lake... that's what features in the common tales; light-shows, not so much.

The three of them are mapping out the appearances and are determined to check each and every one out: except now Harry won't get the chance to accompany his friends.

He grumbles and scowls and scolds, but Fortuna, while sorry that they're stuck with boring chores and repeated reprimands, is anything but repentant.

"He's a pig with wings," she says in a nasty tone. "He's always being mean! And he can't even read – _and_ he's jealous of my flying. And he's stinky."

"Fortuna!" scolds Harry.

But she doesn't listen and keeps whining: "Why do I have to do all those training exercises with him, they're boring, and he's lousy and I don't want to have him around! He's tiresome and mean! Why do I have to stay with him? Come on, Harry, say I don't have to!" she cajoles sweetly.

Harry rolls his eyes and wonders when he became a parent to a twelve tonnes, scaly brat – and how did he manage to spoil her so?

At the end of October – on the tail end of their punishment detail and just a few days before what would be Halloween back home – Harry faces the greatest scare of his life in this world.

By now the number of healthy dragons has dwindled to scarily few, but Fortuna is still healthy, to his everlasting joy. They're on probation because of her fight with Mirificus, but because there are so few flight-able dragons anymore, she's sent around anyway.

They're about to return from a scouting jaunt to the coast, just delaying a little to savour the salty wind they don't get at the Covert; but Fortuna isn't enjoying it as much as she should.

Harry notices: of course he does. He is forever alert for any sign of illness, sometimes waking up in dread at night, just to check she's still alright. He notices at once that she's not as lively in her aerial stunts as usual, that she looks tired and perhaps a bit uncomfortable.

He notices, and he frets – not panic, not yet; there are many reasons she could be feeling under the weather, it isn't necessarily the worst. She insists that she is fine and he focuses on that, breathing steadily, speaking softly to ascertain just how unwell she feels, without panicking _her_. He has to stay calm.

But his nervousness is already morphing into anxiety, his fear grows with every mile she flies while staying somewhat quiet, which is just not her. This tiredness could very well be what he's been watching for so obsessively, what he's been fearing all along.

He can hardly bear to even think – let alone voice – the suspicions and worries mounting in him. What if she is...?

He tries his best to keep calm, to reassure himself – puts it down to their being a little out of shape, after all, they haven't flown much as of late; she doesn't complain of any soreness, no matter how much he asks, it _might_ be just fatigue; perhaps it's just his anxiousness playing on his nerves...

Until Fortuna starts coughing.

There is a moment of blinding terror when he registers the first sneeze – exactly what he's been expecting (dreading) and hoping desperately would never happen – all the world goes white and buzzing as fear closes in on him because this is it, the Plague has caught up with her – it's like every other onset of the sickness he's witnessed and now it's her turn, God help them – his Fortuna is doomed.

He feels despair choking him.

She has to land hastily, her breath coming short. The light coughing of just a minute ago is already devolving into a full-blown fit. In a few hours, she'll be coughing up blood.

Harry thinks he might be yelling, or crying, but he isn't entirely sure; all he can think is no no no no _no_ , because this is Fortuna and he can't lose her and she just can't be ill, she can't, she was perfectly healthy this morning, just a little under the weather, how can she be coughing so much now, what can he do, what can he do, he can't lose her, no no no...

Harry's magic surges in reaction to his fear, strong and wild, like it hasn't in years.

Later on, when he tries to explain it to his friends, he'll realize that what he's feeling at the moment isn't unlike running into a Dementor unexpectedly – and Harry can say this with full knowledge of the facts; but right now he cannot truly think with any coherency. He cannot even _react_ , really: his magic does it for him.

All he is aware of is the great wave rushing up within him, then out, and how Fortuna wheezes, a little breathless, but the coughing is slowing down, blessedly, the muscles of her throat relaxing, her thundering heartbeat calming down, or maybe it's his own, and finally it all stops.

She regains enough breath to start reassuring him that she's fine, really, her throat is no longer sore and her mind isn't foggy anymore; Harry all but collapses against her, hugging her foreleg with all of his strength. Black spots dance before his eyes.

He doesn't know for sure what happened. He doesn't care. He's feeling light-headed anyway – whether from relief or magical exhaustion, he doesn't know. Both, likely.

But she's alright; she's telling him she's alright; she's even flying at her usual mad speed again. She's alright.

They make it back to the Covert, somehow, and a still panicked, groggy Harry insists the dragon surgeons look her over, then again, and _again_ , until Warren starts yelling that he's an idiot, can't he see she's fine, he's the one who looks like death warmed over, he'd better go and see to himself, and leave them alone, as they have better things to do than cater to a healthy dragon, when there are so many sick ones.

Harry hears only one thing: _healthy dragon_.

The relief is so strong he almost faints.

It is Maria Berriman who carries him away and to the courtyard (she tries getting him to his room, but the idea of not seeing Fortuna right now is beyond what he can bear) and gets the tale out of him.

She's relieved that he "was mistaken" and the rest of the crew, babbling with relief, all agree that he's clearly over-wrought, they all are, aren't they, he must have seen what wasn't there, that's all – just something in her throat triggering her cough reflex, obviously, not at all the Plague.

"We're all terrified, but God willing, she's well and will remain so," Berriman consoles him, pushing a glass of red wine into his hand. He looks at it uncomprehendingly.

"Likely as not, she just choked on something," says Barton, a hand on his shoulder, not bothering to stifle his relieved grin.

But Harry knows it's not so.

Fortuna herself seems to realize it, because she is rather subdued, nowhere near as vocal as usual and wraps herself around Harry's small form quite tightly. They spend the night without losing touch of each other.

When he haltingly tells his friends, Hermione theorizes that his magic must have surged to protect his beloved dragon.

Ron nods along: "Like Mums healing their kids with accidental magic, yeah? It's rare, because mostly it's the child's own magic that reacts, but it happens."

"You've always had very strong accidental magic, Harry," the witch says affectionately. "I'm not entirely surprised this happened. Very glad, but not surprised."

The young dragon is mightily pleased by this idea – of course her Harry is so special – and also quite relieved, even as she is saddened that her friends keep falling ill because they don't all have such wonderful captains.

"But if they did have you, I wouldn't, and so I suppose it is for the best," she says with some confusion, but utter seriousness.

Harry snorts but strokes her gently, in that way of his, and she all but purrs in contentment.


	9. Nine Months

_Disclaimer:_ _Characters from Harry Potter, Temeraire and Doctor Who are, of course, not mine and I make no profit from playing with them._

* * *

 _A/N: It's been ages, I know... I know! But to make up for it, the chapter is nice and long :) The epilogue should be up in the next few days, too.  
_

* * *

 ** _Nine Months_**

It is Ron who at last meets the creatures responsible for all the disappearances and if he wasn't busy running with all his strength, he'd curse heartily.

Why, oh, why does it have to be spiders?

Not even decent, normal spiders (insomuch as those horrid things can be decent): no, these are huge, blue monsters with long hairs sticking to their bodies, an unholy number of malevolent, glittering eyes and far too many legs flexing and extending in a revolting manner as they run along the accursed invisible webs.

The way they move is utterly amazing.

If Ron didn't know there are silky threads all over, that they must be using, if he wasn't tripping and getting tangled in the invisible things himself, he could almost believe the spiders are flying, gliding through the air in an incredibly graceful dance of smooth movements, letting them cover a lot of ground too fast for his comfort.

It's beautiful. As beautiful as they are ugly.

He is stricken by the incongruous though that, as hideous as regular Acromantulas are, this blue version is even worse.

And of course they're hunting him.

How did he get here, anyway?

Oh, right.

It was his own idea. Damn it all...

It all goes back to the morning before, around noon of what had then turned into an incredibly long day: Harry had been ensconced in the crook of Fortuna's leg, studying Hermione's maps with keen focus.

The wizard captain hasn't left Fortuna's side since the scare they had a few days ago, when his magic surged to heal her from the onsetting of the Plague. He's left it to Ron and Hermione to complete the survey of the zones where the odd light-shows have been spotted, like they've been doing during his and Fortuna's punishment period.

Unfortunately, their examinations hadn't been yielding results until yesterday: they'd only managed to confirm that the places are, indeed, linked with the disappearances – the invisible webs that polluted the areas prove as much.

Those weird threads are really starting to irritate Hermione, who finds them fascinating – they're incredibly strong yet impalpable, resistant to sharp shear or tensile stresses but utterly yielding to gradual deformation; she hasn't yet managed to make them visible (not without resorting to spraying them with something, like talc or very fine water mist, which for some reason she hasn't worked out, utterly ruins them). She keeps muttering about it, much to Ron's amusement, with that adorable frown of concentration she gets when she's researching something difficult, that he totally finds sexy.

Harry hadn't been discouraged by their reports and had simply started going over their notes with a fine-toothed comb, while Fortuna looked over his shoulder.

"It's useless, there's no rhyme or reason to it all," had been saying Ron, feeling discouraged.

"Not true," Harry had retorted suddenly. "There. Look."

With a few careful strokes of his quill, he'd highlighted what, in their anxiousness to investigate each single site thoroughly, they'd missed: the progression of 'light-shows' wasn't entirely random, but could be rather easily grouped into two series of aligned points – two ideal straight lines at an angle with each other, with the points scattered on them at narrowing intervals.

When considered in time as well as space, the pattern had become even more clear: taking as reference the most recent happening, the earliest instance was also the farthest towards the south-west and the second was the farthest to the north-east; then came another one to the south-west, slightly closer than the first one, and then a fourth, again to the north-east, slightly closer as well... and so on, alternating, at shortening intervals, until a sort of ideal line could connect them all. The latest one, which was more or less in the middle, had not been followed by any repeat: as if whatever what causing it had stopped.

The other line ran more east to west, at an angle to the first one, and wasn't so complete yet, but it did have a series of aligned points grouped off to one side and an equal number on the other, and the times confirmed they had appeared at alternating intervals, growing closer to an ideal middle point with each apparition.

"It's a pendulum!" had exclaimed Hermione, after observing it all for a good long deal. "And it's slowing down."

She'd taken the quill from Harry and started mimicking a pendulum over the map, letting the ink trail from one point to the next, then back to the third and so on.

An oscillating trajectory of narrowing segments had appeared under their eyes, confirming her guess.

She'd quickly moved to do the same with the other line, the incomplete one, and Harry had grinned, figuring out what she was trying to do: "We can predict where the next one will be!"

"And when, more or less," had nodded Hermione with a smile: "the time intervals seem to be almost halved with each oscillation. There should be another light-show five miles north of Cainneach's hollow... let's see... an hour before dawn, tomorrow."

"Brilliant." Ron had been sold at once. "Let's go there and investigate."

"Oh, but we can't!" had piped up Fortuna unexpectedly, in her profound brass voice, that ever since her brush with the Plague has deepened and now sounds as if a bronze bell is tolling sonorously.

"Why not?" had asked Harry, baffled. "It's not so far that we can't make it before dark. If you prefer to wait until tomorrow, I suppose we can, but it would be best to..."

"Nobody's supposed to be there," had told them Fortuna primly. "The older dragons say so. Salvius especially! Cainneach's hollow is _wrong_."

"It's wrong to go there? Why – some sort of religious reason?" had wondered Ron sarcastically, because he is still somewhat smarting over the ridiculous importance that religion has in this society.

"No, there's something _wrong_ there," had explained Fortuna patiently. "That's what they say."

She hadn't known more than that and the first order of business had thus become interrogating Salvius, the Longwing partnered with Captain Moreton, and whoever else had told Fortuna of this 'wrongness'.

Which... they really should have done sooner.

Even a day later, Ron is still kicking himself for not thinking of it. Of course the dragons know more about the situation than the humans. Of course.

"Dragons are widely considered sensitive to the supernatural," he'd explained to Harry and Hermione. "In all the stories, they know stuff like that a curse was cast or where the faeries will dance, before the night even falls! They're often the ones who warn the men away..."

Of course the dragons would know.

Why hadn't they asked sooner? They'd assumed that the general dismissiveness of the Aviation towards the disappearances meant nobody in the Corps could help them. Bit short-sighted, that. Just because the aviators care little for something, doesn't mean the dragons feel the same!

They'd found Salvius down at the lake, rather predictably.

The few dragons who are still healthy like to splash about from time to time, though Ron got the impression it is a novelty, from the reactions of the captains, and not long-established. Fortuna never much took to it, even if she likes being clean. She goes about it fastidiously, careful not to let more water than necessary touch her. Nothing like the Reapers and Coppers, who love frolicking in the water and often launch in impressive splashing battles.

Also predictably, all the dragons present had been quite eager to help them, Salvius more than anyone.

The few who aren't showing symptoms of the Plague yet are awfully bored by the confinement and any distraction is welcome.

Besides, Salvius is a vane, excitable and irascible creature, very different from his composed and unruffable Captain, and despite being old, almost never acting as sensible as his age and experience should lead him to do; he had preened under the attention he was bestowed and had relished the chance to shock them with his tale.

He'd started off informing them primly that _of course_ he would not go there and neither should anyone else, because the humming air is a sign of bad things to come.

Harry had voiced their confusion: "Humming air?"

"It hums, so much that it makes your bones vibrate and your teeth hurt. It's quite unpleasant," Salvius had told them with a sniff, "I've felt like that before, and I didn't want to go back to the place, but Catherine insisted and so we did go, and there was _something_ there." He'd puffed up with the importance of the information he was imparting. "Something that you can't see, but it touches your skin, and it's not water, or mud, but it feels a bit like both, only in threads."

"The webs," had whispered Hermione, eyes gleaming.

Silvana, the mild-mannered, musically inclined Yellow Reaper, who had also been to the place and had subsequently shown vehement reluctance to going there again, according to her captain, had insisted on interjecting: "It makes you feel all tingly and _icky_."

"And it's because the whole place was wrong beforehand," had added Salvius quickly, eager to regain centre stage. "But that's not the worst."

"No, that just feels funny," had agreed Silvana, making Salvius hiss at her: "I'm telling the story!"

She'd rolled her eyes, but subsided and he'd turned to them, pleased with himself, and chatted on about seeing a bunch of sheep floating in mid-air, bleating pitifully and kicking their legs uselessly a few feet above the ground.

"I thought about eating one or two, since they were just _there_ , you know, but then a young shepherd arrived at a run and I thought better of it. Catherine always gets upset when I take sheep outside the feeding grounds: not at all like her father," he'd confided with dissatisfaction.

Then he'd moved out of the water and crouched low, preparing to share the most riveting part of his story: the young shepherd had tried futilely to free his sheep, only to get caught in whatever was holding them himself; then, as Salvius felt a little bad for him and wondered if he should help, a monster had appeared into the glade and made a beeline for the struggling young man.

"It was the hour of deepening twilight, so I couldn't see well, but there was a big shadow, bigger than a sheep, and it was flying, but not like a dragon, and it had no wings, only a lot of legs."

Salvius had been gleeful with the captive attention of his listeners.

"And then," he'd finished in an almost shout, "it _ate_ him!"

His piercing, excited voice had sounded even louder in the sudden nervous silence that had followed it.

"It was so fast, I couldn't stop it; but I roared and it got scared and flew away," he'd concluded, sounding smug, in the vaguely horrified, enduring silence.

"Oh, come on!" had burst out a young cadet, loud but querulous. "Remember what the Captain said. It's all nonsense. You're not to spread tall tales just to scare people!"

Salvius had roared, displeased.

"Don't be like that!" all the cadets that had been washing Salvius before they'd arrived had complained, half nervous, half defiant, and a lot mulish.

"There's no point pretending it's not real, it happened, I saw it! What's the point in never talking about things?" had rebuked Salvius. "You saw the sheep clear as day, same as me, and so did Catherine! We all did!"

A babble of overlapping yells: "Shut it!" – "Don't, just don't!" – "He's right, we were there...!" – "It is so true. My brother says..." – "It's nonsense!"– "The Captain says..."

"What is all this?" had sounded Captain Moreton's voice over the confusion. "Settle down, all of you, and go about your business!"

Ron hadn't noticed her arriving but as everybody made room for her, he'd seen that she didn't look well – she was harried, worried and not at all inclined to indulge anyone.

"Salvius is telling everybody about that time he went off by himself, while the ground crew was busy fixing those torn straps and you had us set up camp to practice our aim," had explained the eldest ensign to his captain. At Harry's raised eyebrows, he'd added in a mutter: "He does that – going off, I mean. He never goes far, but he doesn't like staying still if he doesn't have to, and Moreton just lets him. It's not like there's anything wrong."

Captain Moreton for her part had rolled her eyes and patted her dragon's flank fondly: "You and your absurd tales. I shouldn't let you wander off, if you'll only think up such nonsense when you do!"

Offended, Salvius had moved away from her hand: "Why do you always do that!? You see something strange and you prefer to pretend nothing's happened – that's stupid, that is! You father wouldn't-"

"My father is dead," had snapped back Moreton and everybody had moved a little away, averting their eyes, to give them some illusion of privacy, should they feel like having a row right then.

The cadets and ensigns had continued to babble and quarrel among themselves and Fortuna had eagerly pushed herself into the conversation. "Why aren't you supposed to talk about it? It's right interesting, it is."

Her tail had been twitching in a way that made Ron think of a cat; Harry had spared a fond look for her.

"What do you think that monster was? Do you think it could really fly? How could it fly without wings?" Fortuna had kept asking intently.

"There was no monster," had rebuked her Captain Moreton, half-glaring over her shoulder at her mulish dragon. Sternly, she'd sent all the aviators off to this or that task.

One of the kids had taken the time to mutter to Fortuna: "It's ghouls, me mum says!" His red hair and murky green eyes had reminded Ron of one of the women in the village, but he couldn't remember her name, or the child's. "That's why they go for men flesh first, and sheep only if they can't find better."

"There's no such thing as ghouls," had said Captain Moreton tiredly. "Now, go!"

"Yes, there are!" had retorted her dragon loudly, turning away from her in a show of offended dignity.

"Salvius, _please._ It's a bunch of ridiculous superstitions."

"You were there! You saw the bones! He was eaten!"

She'd gritted her teeth: "We're all tired, seeing things..."

Salvius had reared and roared, furious.

Silvana, bless her gentle soul, had put an end to the tension by chirping that Cadwaladr had seen something like that too. Moreton had rolled her eyes and muttered about silly dragons and sillier stories, but Salvius had been sufficiently pleased.

Ron, Harry and Hermione had retreated and promptly gone to ask Cadwaladr about it all, in the sheltered spot he'd found for himself in the quarantined areas.

The massive white form had been slumped, but aside from lethargy, he hadn't seemed in too bad a shape. The Plague isn't hitting the older dragons as harshly as the younger ones.

He'd been more sensible and grounded than Salvius, too: "Hmm," he'd murmured. "I've seen it, yes. Felt the humming all over my scales. Those places feel wrong because you can tell there's something there, but you can't find it: it's not just invisible, you cannot hear it or touch it or smell it. It's disconcerting. I don't like it, I don't like it at all."

He'd sighed ponderously, shifting in an effort to find a more comfortable position. "As for the monsters... I've seen two shadows preying on trapped sheep, yes." His long claws had scraped the ground over and over, restlessly. "My eyesight isn't what it once was, but the way they moved reminded me of the sea dragons I saw in my youth, when I travelled to India. Was that with your father, Derec? No, no. I remember now, it was with my Jones. My first captain."

He'd hummed reminiscently, closing his eyes with a tired sigh. "Yes, yes, they moved smoothly like that. Fluid. Beautiful to watch. These here weren't dragons, though. Not even sea dragons. Too small... but I couldn't see very well."

Captain Jones, laconic as usual, had simply stroked his dragon's muzzle gently and added, briefly: "My eyes are nowhere as good as Cadwaladr's, but something did eat those sheep, and it wasn't anything I recognized."

He'd said nothing more, merely giving them desolate looks when they'd thanked him.

"Well, I think we have enough to go on. The sooner we leave, the sooner we can get into position," had declared Harry blithely, only to stop short and go blank-faced as he'd almost run into Captain Howard.

"Going somewhere, Potter?" he'd sneered with menacing contempt. "I didn't think anyone was allowed time off. Running away, like the coward you are?"

"Merely trying to solve a mystery and protect the civilians," had replied the wizard with forced courtesy. He may dislike Howard, but a captain in the quarantined areas could mean only one thing and it earned the jerk Harry's pity and respect at once. "How's Mirificus?" he'd asked as kindly as he could.

Howard had taken it badly, interpreting it as a taunt instead of the genuine concern it was. He'd paled with rage and started spitting insults and threatening all sort of consequences if they dared to go near his dragon.

Unwilling to make things worse, Harry had stammered some platitudes and backed away. Hermione had been indignant, but Ron had simply grabbed his best friend's shoulder with sympathy.

He knows Harry finds it difficult to face the other aviators, especially those whose dragons are already suffering. They're all beyond grateful that Fortuna is immune, and no-one as much as Harry, but it is hard for him to meet his fellow captains and see the desperation in their eyes.

"It feels like anything I say is like gloating about our blessed state," he'd murmured yesterday, miserably. "I wish there was anything I could do for them."

But his magic isn't omnipotent and the miracle that preserved Fortuna was a one-time deal.

At least they'd had a solid lead on their mystery to cling to, at long last: something concrete they could _do_.

Their hurdles had been far from over, however.

Captain Moreton had been reluctant to even listen to them and a sanctioned trip that night hadn't seemed in the cards.

Worse still, Captain Howard, always ready to give Harry a hard time, had come out of the quarantine – still pale with fury – for no other goal than to twist their desire to investigate the Wastes into a coward's attempt at avoiding deployment.

It's true that they're short on dragons on the Channel and Fortuna would be of great use there; it's also true, however, that Celeritas himself is delaying her relocation until Priscus, the very young Longwing partnered with Captain Winyard, can join her there, "since old Excidium is holding up well as flag-dragon of the Channel Division," as he'd explained.

Besides, Harry's resigned himself to their imminent posting, more or less. Howard's insinuations are nothing more than a tiresome bother.

Captain Moreton had let the accusations drop eventually, but they'd wasted a lot of valuable time in that pointless squabbling.

Furthermore, Moreton had showed no patience for their entreaties. She'd never supported their inquiries either, but enabling an investigation that would take a dragon away from the relative security of the Covert? Not likely.

Her Salvius is still well, thank Heaven, but too many others are coughing their lungs out; even with her companion being among the lucky ones, the Plague is taking a toll on her. She struggles with being in charge under such adverse circumstances. She's grown harder, stricter, uncaring.

It is not the time, in her lofty opinion, to waste efforts on civilians who aren't as valuable as dragons or even aviators and ought to be able to look after themselves besides.

This attitude, Ron knows, is precisely why strife has been brewing between the Covert and the village, that was never there before.

Common citizens think – not unreasonably – that the aviators should protect them, that the dragons might be able to face whatever is killing off their sheep, if no longer their people.

Aviators are too preoccupied with their sick dragons to care about mere cattle. Perhaps if the dragons were still well they might be concerned about the diminished food reserves, but as most dragons are eating less and less, even that isn't enough to gain the Corps' attention. The general consensus is that no-one can be spared to help out with what is deemed a civilian problem – even if it is a reluctant agreement on the part of those who have relatives in the village. "Being in the service requires sacrifice," they say, and with that, they ignore that they could help. An attitude made more ridiculous by the fact that the illness leaves them with a lot of time on their hands.

Harry, who's been arguing the most that they should protect the common people (the three wizards have long been casting repelling wards as a matter of course, against every dark creature they can think of, on the odd chance that it might be effective against whatever is out there) and whose current low standing among aviators has resulted in dismissive rejections of his ideas more often than not, had been visibly fuming in Moreton's office.

Too few share his view of duty and honour and he finds their indifference ten times more disgraceful than being reluctant to throw his dragon into a damn war. He hadn't been shy in making this opinion known, either.

Astonishingly, they'd found a staunch supporter in Silvana's companion, Captain Lennox – quite the surprise since he's one of the most vocal denigrators of Hermione's educational efforts and has made no mystery of his low opinion of the trio.

In this instance, however, their interests run together. Not only is he a native of the local village, with family still there; he's also a generous and determined soul, who truly believes in their duty to protect England.

"Not just ourselves – all of England. Down to the last child," he'd stated grimly, making the senior captain flush in shame.

Moreton and Lennox had ended up in a shouting match.

"Our _duty_ is to fight! If Napoleon were to invade...!"

"Well, what's the point of defending a _land_ if the _people_ are already gone!"

"It's our dragons who're almost gone! Or perhaps you haven't noticed the Plague that's ravaging our ranks!"

"You are a disgrace to the bars on your shoulder!"

They'd all tried to make Moreton see reason – Lennox had cited duty, honour, compassion; Harry had ranted about twirling their thumbs when they could be _helping_ ; Ron had pointed out that it is affecting people close to home, so to speak, both in the village and in the Covert; Hermione had sensibly remarked that there is unease and unrest everywhere, that a lot of people are frightened, "and that's never a good thing, is it?"

She'd acknowledged that they were right, but stubbornly claimed that her task was to protect the dragons under her command. _Not_ exposing them to possibly-real monsters (not that she believed the tales) was the most sensible option.

"Besides, it's too far. It's an eight hours hike to get there on foot and there's no hope of using carriages or the like. And the dragons won't go there," she'd objected briskly.

"They're just big cowards, is what they are," had grumbled Lennox disparagingly.

"No they aren't!" had shot back Hermione, glaring. "They're unnerved by something there and you would do well to heed them, because they're smarter than you by far!"

The portly man had gaped at her, outraged: "Smart! They aren't smart. They're just intelligent enough to talk, that's all. Just because you went and built up some fancy delusions for the rich to waste their money on doesn't mean..."

"My School is much more than that!"

"Sorry to interrupt," had interjected Ron in a tone that said he wasn't sorry at all, "but this is getting us nowhere. We all agree to scout out the place, right?"

"No, we don't. I do not think we should waste time and valuable people on this..." had started Moreton mulishly.

And Harry had finally snapped – "As if anybody's doing anything useful!" he'd yelled. "People are too frightened and worried and frantic to give much thought to training or anything else! And have you thought this through?"

He'd slammed his hands down on her desk and with cold fury had pointed out – dates and places on hand – that the disappearances and the Plague had started at the same time.

"What if they're connected? Huh?"

That had silenced Moreton. Frightened and endangered people would not move her, but when it came to stopping the dreadful illness, any avenues had seemed worthy of investigation: in the end, that had been the argument that had won the callous woman over.

They'd reluctantly been given the all clear for their 'mission', albeit as a strictly scouting expedition.

" _Are_ they connected, do you think?" had asked Ron, worried, later. He doubted it, but... the timing was suspicious.

Harry had shrugged with some bitterness: "I don't believe that for a minute: it makes no sense; we know where the Plague came from – that Dakota they brought to Wales. I just knew she's desperate enough to go for it. Finally."

"In any case, we'd better hurry. The sooner we put a stop to this madness, the better," had concluded Lennox harshly.

The two dragons had made things difficult, too. Silvana had complained loudly at the idea of returning to one such place and had a bit of a row with her angry captain, who'd shouted at her, red in the face and panting with outrage, until she'd sulkily agreed to go, but only if he promised to take her to a concert soon. They'd heard Lennox curse his stubborn dragon, Laurence and Harcourt's bright ideas, Hermione's absurdities and the world at large for a good long while.

Fortuna had whined a bit – "I don't want to feel all weird and icky!" – but Harry had talked her into it quickly enough and they'd been off, just the three of them secured to her back, in the dead of night.

It had taken less than an hour, since with Lennox' blessing, they hadn't waited for the much slower Silvana: Harry and he had agreed that it would be best to split up and cover more sites rather than try and coordinate two dragons with wildly different flying and fighting styles.

Thus, even with all of the delays and pointless waits, they'd managed to catch the tail end of the 'light-show'.

It'd been spectacular.

With nitid brightness in the dark of night, a morning glory spillway made entirely of light had glowed like a hole in the fabric of the world; faintly luminescent threads lit with iridescent reflexes by its light had gleamed dully, marking the position of a spiderweb that had seemed anchored to the spillway and spreading out from it.

Fortuna had stopped her grumbling about flying in the dark in favour of gliding as silently as she could through the night, flying in slow circles to give them a chance to watch.

They'd spotted two indistinct shadows moving in and out of the light, impossible to see clearly from where they'd been, industriously busying themselves around it.

Fortuna had made one last lap around it, far above it in the moonless night, and then had flapped her wings vigorously, taking them away.

"I want to get a closer look at the webs, now that they're visible," had whispered Hermione with some excitement.

"We should be careful not to scare them away. We need reliable information, I don't want to find myself with nothing to show for tonight!" had warned Harry.

"Let's split up," had decided Ron, "we'll go at it from different angles. You and Fortuna should hang back, if Salvius scared them she might as well. Hermione and I will go, keep hidden and scout the place. If we're in trouble, you'll sweep in and rescue us."

"Sounds like a plan," Harry had agreed.

And that's how Ron finds himself here, in the humid light of dawn, tearing through the invisible webs that, against all logic, become stronger and harder the faster he goes through them, as if they were sentient and trying to actively stop him, while if he relax and moves slowly, they offer almost no resistance.

Except that's not an option because huge blue spiders are almost onto him.

They're close enough that he can hear their sounds, screeches and clacking and clicks, utterly alien but strangely harmonious: it almost sounds like a language, the way Aragog's children's clicking and hissing had. And isn't that bringing back nightmares. Urgh.

He trips and curses, getting up as quickly as he can, barely sparing a glance to his pursuers.

The way they move is incredible: it's like they're flying on invisible rails, which he knows are really their webs. It's smooth and elegant even with their revolting joints; they make it look weightless, like the best athletes can make their own flying look effortless, when Ron knows it's anything but.

They're gaining on him.

He curses again.

Where is a Flying Ford Anglia when he needs her...!

A sudden shadow and low thunder of wind from above him signals Fortuna's arrival: a bellowing voice – Harry's – shouts a very welcome, powerful: "Repello!"

Grasping the spell, Ron twists – getting tangled in the damn, hardening webs – and thrusts his wand forward, yelling in unison with his best friend another: "Repello!"

The two spiders are thrown back – and lo and behold, the webs are working against them now, hardening against their bodies whenever they hit the threads and actively resisting their twisting.

The blue spiders are trained, though, and quickly gain control of themselves, going back to the smooth, fluid movements that let them pass through the webs without impediment. Ron kind of wants to learn that trick.

Fortuna doesn't land, but dives low enough that he can jump to grab her leg, hoisting himself up and quickly securing his carabiner hooks to her harness. She moves away in a hurry.

"Those webs are a pain in the ass!" he gasps as Harry heaves him higher up by the arm.

"Well. At least we know for sure what we're up against, now," says the wizard captain with a grin that has no business being so wide.

Ron mock-glowers: "Did it have to be spiders, damn it?!"

They laugh together.

The first thing Harry insists on doing is informing the people of 'their' village, the one closest to the Covert, of what the threat is and talk about defences and counter-attacks. There's really no point in trying to do everything on their own, no matter what they're used to.

To their surprise, the news is welcomed with a wave of relief. Malicious faes and cursed spirits, preternatural entities and the Devil's own pets, they're scared of; concrete critters are nothing they can't cope with – even weird, dangerous, previously unheard of beasties. So long as they're not supernatural, they can fight back.

Hermione's map is quickly appropriated – for once, she's blessed instead of criticized – and the hope they'd given up regains strength as they discuss how to recover the lands they'd abandoned in their fear. They cheer Harry and Ron as heroes and break out the best whiskey to toast their health.

Hermione, for her part, all but disappears: she's harvested herself a good few samples of the mysterious webs and is studying them or experimenting or something. Ron doesn't bother trying to understand: she'll explain when she's ready.

Harry throws himself into helping the villagers plan how to protect the women and children and it raises him in their estimation even more; they are all singing his praises and looking at him for direction.

Ron, quite naturally, is right by his side and takes over all the organizing of hunting parties and gathering of volunteers and coming up with attack plans and so on. He also tag-teams with Harry to secretly cast a few more wards around the village, just in case the blue acromantulas might be as intelligent and inclined to retaliation as the common ones.

Even as busy as he is, Ron finds himself reflecting on his best friend's familiar attitude and his own response to it.

Back when they were younger, Ron had always either been swept up in Harry's powerful leadership, or else resented it and fought it; he remembers though, the day when he finally realized his own attitude had changed for good – that day at Shell Cottage towards the end of the war, when in the tense quiet of Bill's cottage, he'd understood, and accepted.

He remembers being almost frightened by how much of Voldemort and even Dumbledore Harry seemed to understand, by how sure his friend was of himself, of what he was doing; feeling bewildered but very impressed as he followed him, sharing astonished looks with Hermione as he spoke to that Goblin, hoping he would explain in the end, watching the terrified wandmaker turn pale in front of Harry's implacability and not blaming him one bit, but also trusting that Harry had things well in hand and strangely enough, trusting that he would call upon Ron himself, when he needed it, for just the right contribution – just like he'd ended up doing, with him, with McGonagall, with Neville...

He's never told his best friend just why, in Ron's eyes, he makes such an excellent leader in times of crisis, and likely never will; but here's yet another example of it. In the middle of an antsy, determined village, filled with people who so far have wavered in their opinion of the green-eyed captain, teetering towards contempt, Harry is calmly and surely steering everybody into doing exactly what _he_ wants.

It's kind of inspiring. And a little bit amusing.

Ron's often been called an excellent strategist.

He's not.

People tend assume that his great skill at chess and similar games should translate in equally great skill in real life – and in a way, it is true. But chess is a confined system, with clear boundaries, only that many pieces, that many moves, a finite chessboard... and most importantly, a distinctly defined goal.

Real life, well.

Ron often finds himself floundering, frustrated, unable to see much of a pattern in the chaotic homogeneity of the world: because real life has no boundaries, no set of pieces, no goal – except what you set for yourself.

No, he's no strategist.

If anything, he's a tactician. His domain is the planning and execution of tactics, and there, he _shines_.

It is Harry, however, who sets him his goals.

He does it so naturally, so easily, Ron thinks he doesn't even know it. Harry can always see the big picture – realize when it's the smallest things that truly matter and when it's time to go for the biggest prize; when the most obvious way is not the one they should pursue and when it's right to walk the path everybody's pointing to.

The other side of the coin is that once Harry figures out what the right thing to do is, the green-eyed wizard tends to flounder – turning to Ron and Hermione, almost chagrined that deciding what should happen isn't enough to make it happen. The end game is always in sight for Harry, but he doesn't often see every step of the way.

That's Ron's job.

It's like a perfectly woven spell, the way it all works; the way it has always worked.

Harry would say something – something outrageous, like "I'm going after Voldemort," or "I need to break into a Gringotts vault," – and Ron's mind would suddenly _see_ ; the world crystallizing in recognizable shapes, that suddenly move in more predictable ways – he would see, clear as he sees the moves he needs to win a game of chess, all the steps he needs to do to achieve those goals, like setting a Devil's Snare on fire or mimicking parseltongue to get at Basilisk venom...

Ron can always see the best way to a victory.

But only if Harry sets up the game for him.

What a team they make.

Bill once told him that leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right. He's not necessarily a leader. Harry is. But managing his best friend is up to him. They'd have probably avoided some of their more hare-brained adventures as kids if he'd figured this out sooner.

But even if it's taken him years to understand, here they are now: Harry sets the direction, and Ron follows without question, but pointing out all the in-between steps that Harry tends to forget or haphazardly leave to luck.

And as always, it works.

They've just managed to get the villagers to agree on a plan of attack – after quite the series of heated debates, sometimes slipping into spirited rehashing of long-standing grievances – when Lennox returns with the triumphant news that the horrid spiders are monstrous, yes, but perfectly mortal: Silvana has slain one easily. They burn the carcass in the village square with loud, exultant jeers, sharing even more whiskey in celebration.

The next order of business is figuring out where the next holes will open and sorting out who will go where. They only have two and a half days, if Hermione's calculations are exact (which they are, of course).

Lennox proudly gathers a good-sized group of aviators too, to join the hunters. He's quite certain that it's their _duty_ and won't be dissuaded; many are convinced by his spirited appeals, even those who wouldn't listen to Harry.

The commoners welcome the help with slight resentment but enough good grace overall. The two leading captains – Harry and Lennox – become the face of the Aviation with the people, mending the fences that Moreton's indifference had destroyed, with nothing more than a show of sincere concern and a willingness to help.

To her credit, she does not pettily oppose them. She does not admit she was wrong, mind, but she has the decency to keep quiet and let them have _carte blanche_ on the whole situation. Her silence is taken as tacit approval and even more aviators get off their bums to help, at long last.

When Hermione re-emerges and triumphantly announces that she has a way to make the invisible webs visible, Fortuna's crew is elected on the spot to escort her to each existent and expected light-hole before the various hunter groups reach them, in order to make the webs visible and give them an advantage – and they set off before Ron can voice his misgivings about having people around when she uses magic.

As it turns out, however, Hermione has gone all muggle on this one ("It would be ten times easier with magic, of course, but I thought it might become difficult to explain..." she comments off-handedly) so there is nothing to be worried about.

She bosses the lookouts ("Assistants!") around, mutters about thermoacoustic engines and non-newtonian fluids and other weird things Ron doesn't bother to understand, fusses and tinkers with a glass tube and a candle and brass faucets, until a soft wail starts from the contraption she's put together and finally, finally, an intricate web of delicate, barely-visible threads, vibrating madly, emerges from thin air, like sea foam when it's lit up by the rays of dawn and draws the crests of previously unseeable waves.

There are many gasps of awed wonder. The rainbow reflexes that make the complex threads gleam are as beautiful as crystal beads and the strange material the web is made of pulses and tenses and almost seems to breathe. Harry's crew is left speechless. Little Donnel's eyes are so wide they dwarf his face; Barton is openly gaping, the riflemen are cursing up a storm.

A screech from somewhere to their right heralds the charge of an unwelcome sentinel and the awestruck mutters switch to screams and loud swearwords.

A volley of bullets nails the blue Acromantula, making it jerk with a terrible screech and tangling it in its own web; it remains dangling from the slowly deforming threads, ugly and exotic. Nobody pays any mind to Fortuna's complaints: "I wanted to do that! That's not fair, Silvana got to kill one, why can't I? Harry!"

Instead, they cautiously get closer, intrigued against their best judgement (though Barton makes it a point to sternly herd the children back).

Wedge, moronic bully that he is, starts poking the hairy body with unpleasant snickers and nastily taunts the men who're more sensibly keeping their distance, ignoring Harry's weary order to stay back.

"What are those things?" breathes one of the midwingmen, sounding positively horrified. Ron feels for him, really.

Hermione answers clearly with a teacher-y tone Ron recognizes as her 'I'm having trouble coping with the squeakiness of this but I won't admit it so I'm hiding in trivia' mood. She used to resort to it a lot in Potions. And in Care of Magical Creatures. Occasionally in Herbology, too.

"They're arthropods, by your classification system," she says loftily and Ron just bites his lip to avoid laughing at her.

"Not mine," mutters Harry, unashamedly amused, drawing an exasperated glare from Hermione but managing to get a smattering of laughter from his crew, which was probably his goal.

"Let's call them blue spiders and leave it at that, yeah?" says Berriman with fake joviality.

" _Big_ blue spiders," corrects Ron, not about to let anyone forget that point.

Suddenly, Wedge pokes the exposed stomach too harshly and the creature snaps into motion, brutally attacking – because apparently it's not quite as dead as they'd thought.

Yells and shouts are torn from everybody's throats – the loudest cry coming from the unlucky lieutenant, and unfortunately, also the shortest. The paired claws at the tip of its upper legs are buried in the incautious Wedge's stomach before they can truly react.

The knee-jerk reaction is to jump back, get away, _run_ ; Fortuna is the only one who darts forward, ignoring the way her bulk has to fight against hardening filaments of web and heedless of the fleeing men she knocks aside.

The creature is throwing itself into abortive attacks, but thankfully, they're now all out of range; the vicious, jerky movements are trapping it more securely in the tangled threads, impeding its movement, but Ron gets the impression it doesn't care about getting free. Perhaps it's too far gone.

The horrified riflemen have hurriedly reloaded and are finally ready to shoot again – late enough, unacceptably late for soldiers, in truth, though the man responsible for their training has paid the steepest price for his laziness – but they don't dare risk shooting Fortuna; the dragon has things under control, in any case: she claws at the struggling Acromantula and nails it to the ground, holding it down until it stops jerking and lies still, then holding it down some more, just to be on the safe side.

It's a shock. Ron gulps and tries to control his breathing, watching the others move slowly – their slight uncertainty before retrieving Wedge's body, the hesitant blinking, as if they can't quite believe what just happened, the frightened voices of the cadets pretending to be brave.

Thankfully, Harry manages to keep his crew from freaking out.

Brisk and barky, he takes charge and sorts people out, setting them to different tasks – create a perimeter, check for other sentinels, recover Wedge's body, arrange for its transportation – concrete tasks, practical and controllable, things to do that do not require too much thinking, that do not let them feel helpless.

Beneath the façade of control, Ron can see Harry berating himself – they should have been more cautious, checked things more carefully, they should have remained aloft – they should have, should have, should have...

It's not his fault, of course; but Ron knows he won't let anyone else bear the burden. His dark looks reflect his guilt and promise a world of pain to his enemies.

In the back of his mind, Ron starts plotting methods to get everybody out of the way, because he has a feeling that magic will be used after all.

The second dragon assigned to this site arrives, carrying his crew and a bunch of villagers and as soon as they realize what happened, rage and panic raise in the air; and it could turn into a disaster – either a terrified flight or a furious witch-hunt (well, spider-hunt), it could go both ways, really – but Ron knows what needs to happen to keep things under control and Harry has always been charismatic and very good at generally being inspiring; between the two of them, order is maintained, the overexcited are calmed, the reluctant convinced, the lazy pushed.

It helps that they're all soldiers, even the youngest raised to cope with sudden deaths in combat. This isn't too different. Truthfully, they're far less shell-shocked than they probably should be.

Messengers are dispatched, too, to warn and inform and explain as quickly as possible. These people really need to come up with better ways to communicate – faster, more reliable – but that's a thought for another time.

Sooner than Ron thought doable, they've entrusted their fallen crewmate and the youngest of Fortuna's crew to the other captain and they're off to the next site. Hermione's weird candle-and-tube-thingy is working and they're going to replicate the effect wherever it's needed.

Their destination is an older site and far from being as bright and grand as the one they've just left, the morning glory spillway is pallid and waning; still there, however, holding up the web that Hermione coaxes into view and surrounded by a strange sort of glass construction, which Hermione makes noises about examining.

They stay alert for any spiders, but nothing stirs around them. Even so, the nervousness increases palpably as they move closer to the fading spillway of light, the crew unnerved by the looks of it and even more by the strange pulling sensation it emits. Ron recognizes it as the first stage of a portkey, when you get hooked right before the trip. It doesn't seem to be taking them anywhere, though. In fact, it's quite easy to resist.

Hermione pulls the two wizards discreetly by the side, face grim but eyes bright: she's come up with the best spells to deal with this. Except that with all the muggles around, they can't use magic.

Harry's expression is still dark. "It's worth exposing us to avoid more deaths," he murmurs steely.

Ron winces. Is Harry serious? He can't be. To Ron's mind, that's really not an option – at all; he knows his best friend's stubbornness, however: it's up to him to offer an alternative.

"What if we put them out first?" he tries desperately. "There aren't that many of them. We can manage to stun them before anyone notices. That way we're free to use magic without risks!"

He's aware he sounds a little bit desperate, his idea has a lot of holes and it's probably not going to work as he hopes and he's kind of trying to sell it by mimicking the way George tries to convince people to test-try his products, but he has to convince them because, well – magic in front of muggles? No, just no.

Thankfully, Harry seems to consider his suggestion seriously and Hermione is biting her lower lip in thought but voices no misgivings. She almost looks relieved, really, and that slows down Ron's anxiety. He's well aware that sometimes his best friends see the world differently from him, but it looks like this time they won't clash. Thank Merlin.

"Stunning is too risky," says Hermione after a while. "Do you know the incantation for the Bewitched Sleep?"

At their predictably blank looks, she huffs and slips her wand out, glowering: "Shield me from view," she orders and starts weaving the charm.

One by one, riflemen and aviators yawn and topple over gracefully, falling asleep under the fluid direction of the young witch's wand, some flopping to the ground, some dangling from the webs, only two putting up a token resistance, their eyes clouding with confusion even as they droop, before giving up and snoring away.

Harry frantically shushes Fortuna who is loudly cheering, as usual excited at seeing magic, and Hermione smoothly concludes the lengthy incantation, twirling her wand around in a finishing move and smiling in satisfaction: "That'll hold them for about two hours," she declares.

"If we hurry, we could manage other sites too," thinks Ron aloud.

"Let's not waste time, then!" exclaims Harry and starts casting Locator Spells around.

They find three of the blue spiders hiding on the opposite end of the clearing; they are obviously frightened of Fortuna, but the moment they realize they're caught, they charge with deadly speed.

The three magicians step forth together, Ron and Hermione flanking Harry as usual, wands drawn and ready. It's such a familiar stance, Ron feels himself relaxing even as adrenalin rushes through him.

" _Sericoligo_!" they chant in unison.

Zig-zagging purple spells shoot out like bullets and grip the silk strands, racing up and down, animating them with the will of their casters: in moments, the blue monsters are trussed up in swathes of their own silk, bound and subdued. Quick as lightning, Hermione transfigures the silk into steel, ensuring they can't break free.

"Now what?" she asks somewhat nervously.

Harry doesn't even hesitate: "Now we kill them," he says grimly.

And they do just that.


	10. Ten Months

_Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit, just a bit of fun._

 _A/N:_ _Aaaand... that's it!_ _Side story's done. Stay tuned for more of the main tale!  
_

* * *

 ** _Ten Months_**

And then comes the day when an incongruous blue box materializes in the middle of the glen.

* * *

It is a glorious day of sun like it's a rare gift to find in December; with no hint of snow in the air and a sky so clean and inviting that Harry is itching to fly from the very moment he wakes up.

Fortuna is more than happy to oblige and the feeling seems to be wide-spread, because they find themselves in good company up in the air.

An impromptu practice session of formation flying soon engages every dragon healthy enough to enjoy the clear sky and Harry isn't the only captain that whoops and shouts in sheer glee in the cold, luminous morning, made even brighter by the hopeful news of Temeraire and Captain Laurence's return. Napoleon might have defeated Russia, but the two heroes have brought back a whole pack of healthy dragons – ferals Laurence has somehow tamed, if the rumours are to be believed – and better still, a _firebreather_.

The day is joyous indeed.

Not that the mingled rain and snow they'd had the previous week could dampen their spirit much, not with such news reaching them: with the way things are going, no kind of weather could get them down. Everybody is giddy, even the captains stuck to the worse off dragons feeling weak stirrings of hope. The unusual, sunny weather is just icing on the cake, really.

Fortuna launches in one of her improvisations, dancing around the prescribed flight pattern at high speed, in a maddening show of her insane flying skills.

Unlike a few months ago, Waltz and Blakethorn, the captains of the two closest Reapers, just laugh and shout encouragements. No more endless complaining about "Potter's bloody crazy dragon" or sneering insults: after all, Harry's a right hero – again; the aviators know he's the one who's handled the threat of the odd blue monsters, even if the hows of it are getting garbled in the various retellings, and the villagers don't forget he's the one who helped them and protected them the most. Nobody's criticizing him anymore – he's the pride of the Covert and hailed as the bravest among them.

"Told you they'd get over it," Harry has said smugly to his friends, but his smirk was sad. Still. No threats of random violence and almost no mention of his supposed cowardice anymore (except from a few jerks like Howard) is a rather nice deal, all in all.

Harry's prepared to take what he gets.

He points Fortuna to the lake and challenges her to plunge until she can skim the water surface and return to the formation before their next pass.

Even his gleeful yell gets left behind by his insanely fast dragon.

Down below, Hermione is holding a politics lesson in the courtyard, very pleased by the attentiveness of her audience. She's quite determined to give them a clear idea of how their government works, and if she can, of how it _should_ work as well.

She's not making any inroads on the civil rights for dragons front, she's well aware, not even with the dragons themselves, but she has not lost hope.

"...and from what my Chapman has told me about Parliament, I do not think any dragons are invited to go there," is saying Marcia, a little, fierce Greyling with elegant splashes of white on her bluish grey wings that make her look like a piece of sky with eyes when she hovers.

"How do you even know about that?" asks Hermione, surprised and pleased.

"Oh, I heard Temeraire talk about all that, down at Dover," she says, very pleased with herself. "He was saying how some of the laws which he has heard make very little sense, and how we dragons should get to have our say in making those laws, and how some of us should go into politics and be repentatives… no… raprentives…"

"Representatives," corrects Hermione automatically.

"That, yes." Marcia fusses virtuously with one of her wings. "I wouldn't do it, of course, because my Chapman would be upset; but it stands to reason that _some_ dragons should."

"Yes," agrees Invictus thoughtfully. "It is only reasonable to consult us on the laws, if we are to follow them."

Hermione can't stop her huge grin.

These are the first steps, and they are the right ones. People just don't think about it – but the dragons are smart enough to fight for themselves, if someone points them in the right direction, gives them but a little nudge. She's so proud to be that someone.

Her _School_ , she's quite certain, is a fundamental step in the progress of this civilization. It might still be in its infancy, it might still involve only a handful of dragons, but it is just a matter of spreading the word, she reflects. In time, the _School_ will soar and dragon rights with it.

It is a pity that the Plague has stifled her efforts so much – if the couriers had not been stopped from travelling, if they could have sat in on a few lessons, even just occasionally or at intervals, they would have spread the word further and further. Not the worst consequence of the terrible illness, she knows, not by far, but nonetheless...

No matter.

She's planted a seed that will grow into a better society. She knows it.

Sadly, Ron's audience is not giving him the same satisfaction.

He glares at the four gathered 'apprentices' whose expressions range from bored to abashed and mentally curses Old Farham, who's practically bullied him into this.

He knows he's supposed to train up an apprentice or two now that he's been a recognized Leather Master for over six months but he's sort of been hoping it wouldn't come up. Unfortunately, what with one thing and another, he's finally run out of excuses to avoid the task.

The problem is that teaching really isn't his cup of tea.

He's always been on the other side of it – the youngest at home (he was never asked to teach Ginny in Mum's place, the way Bill and Percy sometimes did), fairly average at school (not the one you'd turn to for tutoring, that's for sure), hanging on Hermione's words during study sessions rather than contributing much. The closest he's ever come to imagining himself in the role is a vague "one day I'll teach my kids Quidditch" kind of thing!

The youngest of his students is only eight, surely he's not supposed to teach him? Damon's a bright child, to be sure, with a mischievous grin and far too great an enthusiasm for sticky and smelly substances, but Ron is slightly scared of the attentive eyes the kid has riveted on him. What if he teaches him something dangerous? What if he doesn't explain properly and something goes terribly wrong? What if an accident like Mick's happens again under his watch?

And the oldest could be his grandfather, besides being one of the best in their line of work, surely he's not supposed to teach _him_? He knows many want him to share his 'trade secrets', but what if he can't do it well enough and disappoints everybody? What if he slips up and teaches them some Potions? What if he stutters and confuses himself and them and makes a complete fool of himself? Old Master Wright's wrinkled face is impassive, but Ron has a feeling the man is laughing up his sleeve anyway.

The other two are even worse; Ron simply doesn't have the gift of keeping someone's attention, explaining things clearly doesn't come easily to him, and in the back of his mind, he keeps hearing Hermione complain about the lack of structure in his essays. He fears his lesson is just as disorganized.

He hems and hums, stuttering through the instructions and sort of hoping showing his techniques might be enough. Hopefully he won't have to whip out his wand to prevent a disaster.

...Are they even listening to him? Those two look like they're in Binn's class...

Should he just give up on lecturing and put them to work? And hope nothing goes wrong?

...How did Harry manage the DA, again?

Still. The kids (and one potential grandfather) who want to learn from him are better than all the ones who only want him to recount the whole killing-the-blue-beasties thing. He remembers how delighted he'd been after the Second Task of the Triwizard Tournament, when everybody wanted him to tell of the lake, and can only shake his head. He'd loved the attention then. Now? Urgh.

He must be getting old.

And then there are the idiots who want to know if the silk from the blue Acromantulas can be _used_. Read: made a profit from. Typical.

"All I know is that they secrete it themselves," says Ron with an eye-roll, every time they ask. "It's the appendages beneath them that extrude silk from the glands in their abdomen – which means... if you want the silk, you have to keep them alive. Not a bright idea, I don't think."

He might not have done any of the research himself, but he has long practice in memorizing the key points of Hermione's lectures, so he's very sure of what he says and manages quite the authoritative tone.

It doesn't seem to be sufficiently convincing, more's the pity.

And yes, maybe he'd have liked to harvest some of the stuff himself to, you know, experiment. But really. Not if the price is _dealing with huge blue spiders!_

"Alright!" he ends up yelling after barely rescuing a jar of cow brains from Damon's risky curiosity. "Enough for today! Just… er… practice with… this..." he gestures to the strips of scrap leather he was teaching them to water-proof by retanning with chromium salts and tries not to wince at how lame he sounds before he hurries away.

Snickers follow him and he pretends not to hear. He just has to get out of the Covert for a little while, that's all; take a walk or something, before he starts yelling at the idiots - or crumbles and goes to Hermione for help. He shudders a little. She'd come up with _lessons plans_ , he just knows it.

Right. A walk is what he needs!

Which is why he's the one to spot the big blue box sitting innocently in the middle of the glen, and the two figures holding hands in front of it.

He stops. He blinks. He grins.

The Doctor is back!

* * *

Of course, their lives get right away turned upside down and filled with all sorts of strange happenings, odd twists, adrenaline-filled meetings and a lot of running.

Not that they don't have experience with that sort of thing – this is them, after all, friendship cemented by troll-baiting and all – but the Doctor makes interesting times happen at such a fast pace it's exhilarating and exhausting in equal measure.

They shouldn't like that. Kinda do, a bit.

* * *

Later, much later, when all is said and done...

...when they've convinced Hermione not to hex the Doctor (though she's still yelling at him now and then) and they've offended and confused all their new friends and comrades, and given them quite the scare...

 _...and_ sort of stolen a (now) cat-sized dragon...

...when they've saved Captain Laurence's family from the accursed blue Acromantulas that, apparently, hadn't been dealt with entirely, while _also_ offending and confusing _and_ slightly terrifying quite a lot of people…

...and they've brokered an improbable truce between the aggressive blue spiders from – it turns out – the planet Rarog and the aggressive local humans with pitchforks, and sent everybody home more or less pacified (if not satisfied)…

...and they've enjoyed the lovely hospitality of Lady Allendale, who's half-charmed and half-scared by them, but nevertheless an excellent hostess; and they've been accused of being French one more time than the Doctor is prepared to bear...

...when they are, at long last, ensconced again in their Common Room on the Tardis (whom Ron has been careful not to offend, this time, half-hoping that if he keeps his decided opinion of her strictly to himself they may be able to start over and he'll have hot water again) and Fortuna is jumping delightedly all over the furniture, squealing about the fantastic room the Tardis has rearranged for her and Harry – with enough room for her to be _herself_ if she wants (but she's kind of liking being so little now that she doesn't _have_ to)...

...Harry sits close to a downcast Hermione.

"Oh, it's nothing," she sighs in answer to his worry. "I just wish I knew if... if what I did had any effect. If I made things better for dragons... or if everything's going to go back to the way it was..."

"I know it was a bit abrupt, they way we left," Harry says carefully, and stops.

Truth be told, he doesn't mind as much as he'd thought he would. Some of life in the last ten months has been wonderful, but there have been dark spots too, ostracism and danger, not to mention the war looming ahead of them. Rather like a year in Hogwarts, come to think of it.

Without the great cooking; but with a lot of nice friendships at least.

He thinks of Barton and his steady seriousness and his patience in teaching him the dos and donts; of Berriman and her impatience with "stupid gowns" and her love of fencing; of little Hadrian Donnel and his habit to hide under beds or bushes "to have a good think"; of Captain Trenholme, who'd continued to write him about his Pascal's Blue, Carinus, and of their time in Gibraltar, until the Plague had caught up with them...

Yes, he'll miss some of the friends he's made, but deep down, the only thing that truly matters to him is that Ron and Hermione are alright, and Fortuna is with him – he asks for nothing more.

He does agree that it would have been nice to say a proper goodbye, and maybe not leave such a bad impression behind (though under the circumstances, that was unlikely), and he sort of understands what Hermione's saying, but he can't bring himself to regret much, not when his dragon is happy and they're going back home (...soonish).

So he just hugs his best friend and says nothing.

"I think I might set up a workshop, when we get back home," says Ron abruptly, flopping down on a couch beside them. He seems to catch their sombre mood and frowns: "Is something wrong?"

"No," Hermione smiles tremulously and moves to his side.

"No," she repeats after a moment, sounding surprisingly at peace. "I'm fretting but I shouldn't be. I've done what I could. We've always known That Alien could come back any time to finally take us home, I should have been ready. I wasn't, really, but when I think about it…" She smiles again, and this time there is a thread of reassured pride in it: "I know my efforts will not taper off into nothingness. Really, the dragons are a great deal more resourceful than even I ever gave them credit for! They'll get their rights recognized, with or without help."

Ron and Harry chuckle in agreement.

"So… a workshop?" asks Harry amused. "For leather wares and such?"

Ron flexes the gloves he hasn't given up and shrugs, with a little bashful smile. "It's just an idea."

"It's a lovely idea," proclaims Hermione, snuggling into him. "What about you, Harry? What will you and Fortuna do?"

"Oh," he says, smiling fondly at his miniaturized dragon. "I'm sure trouble will find us soon enough."


End file.
